What fuels Keane's venom?

It became commonplace among some sportswriters to rationalise Keane's apparently irrational behaviour by noting that he was the product of a tough ghetto in his native Ireland. The received wisdom was that he had never outgrown a brutalised upbringing in a rough neighbourhood. That "wisdom" needs to be reassessed. The facts, disclosed here in Cork, his home town, tell another story and suggest that the Keane enigma is far more complex than we ever imagined.

Roy Maurice Keane was born in 1971, a time of high unemployment and, for many in southern Ireland, hardship. His family rented a home on the Ballinderry Park housing estate in the northern suburb of Mayfield, a working-class area which had its share of poverty, but was never a ghetto. The house where Keane spent his early childhood overlooks green hillsides. When he was a schoolboy his family moved to a bigger house nearby with a garden that backed on to playing fields and a football pitch.

Keane's father Maurice - always known as Mossie - had a job in a textile factory and the Keanes were better off than some. They took a summer holiday every year and once the entire family spent a fortnight at Butlins, a rare treat in those difficult times. Roy was the fourth of five children, and a rather small and exceptionally skinny child. Was this demon number one?

"Roy was small for his age and he suffered for it," Rose Buckley, a close family friend said. "My daughter was at school with him and she came home one day to say the bigger lads had given him a terrible roughing up." Keane's response was to join a local boxing club. He won all his first fights before abandoning boxing for football. But he was still small and his size denied him the opportunities that other talented players were getting.

"What you have to understand about Roy," a childhood friend said, "is that in those early days he had to try harder than anyone else to make up for what some felt was a lack of physical presence. That determination has never left him."

Roy Keane has his share of critics in his home town - many will never forgive him for abandoning the Irish World Cup team in Japan. But there is genuine puzzlement here over his image in England as a thug from the backstreets. Rose Buckley, who has known his family for nearly 30 years, said Keane's mother Marie had been deeply upset by one newspaper's description of him as "soccer's bad boy from the ghetto".

"Roy was never a hooligan," Mrs Buckley said. "His mother was always very strict with him. She looked after her family extremely well. They were always very close and well turned-out. The children all went to church and did their lessons. She was one of the leaders of our local community association and she was one of the most active people in our little group that organised sporting events and outings for the children."

John Malone, a 65-year-old retired soldier, is a close friend of the Keane family. He said: "Roy would be out there with his football day and night, but when his mother called him he'd pack up and go home. His sister Hilary was in my drum majorette group, the Mayfield Majorettes, and I know them all pretty well. They are lovely people. Mossie and Marie go through hell when they see what's written about him."

But the stories, after all, are true. Yes, he did have street fights, there was a lurid court case - which he won - when a former neighbour accused him of defamation for calling her a whore. Two women claimed he'd assaulted them in a nightclub (although it subsequently emerged they telephoned the Sun newspaper before calling the police). And the onpitch violence has been well documented.

The autobiography has been viewed by many as evidence of an overweening arrogance and egotism. In the book, he derides Jack Charlton, a man revered for his successes with the Irish national team. He claims current manager Mick McCarthy set him up during the World Cup and repeats an unedifying conversation in which he says he told McCarthy: "You're a f****** w*****. I didn't rate you as a player, I don't rate you as a manager and I don't rate you as a person. You're a f****** w***** and you can stick your World Cup up your arse."

He is also scathing about some of his teammates. He called goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel "a poser", revealed that his manager at Nottingham Forest, Brian Clough, knocked him down in the dressing room for making a slip on the field - the book is stuffed with violent encounters. So what turned the quiet and rather shy young sportsman into a raging hothead?

The Templeacre Tavern stands on a hillside overlooking Cork city. It is a football pub, and when Manchester United played Middlesbrough on Tuesday night it was packed not only with United fans, but old friends of Roy Keane. This was his local pub, and photographs of him are everywhere. The bench to the left of the door is known as "Roy's corner", because that's where he always sits with his friends.

Keane was not playing in the match because he was about to undergo a hip operation, a procedure that may keep him out of the game for three months, perhaps long enough to see through any match ban imposed in the wake of the McAteer incident. They are a partisan crowd at the Templeacre Tavern. Keane is not only a football icon but, as one regular explained, "one of us". That he is. When he first moved to England to play for Nottingham Forest, he would return to Cork regularly to visit his parents and old mates.

An evening out would begin at the Templeacre with several pints of lager and then Keane and his group would take a taxi down the hill into the city and one of its discos. The drinking would continue. From lager, Keane would move on to Bacardi rum, large ones. Inevitably, he and his friends were rowdy.

"The fact is, it got up people's noses," one of the Templeacre crowd said. "Roy was doing very well. He had a flash car and lots of money to spend. His dad Mossie used to come out for a few drinks and Roy used to give him a big wad of English money. They used to call him Sterling Moss. People picked on Roy to try to earn a bit of kudos. They could brag for weeks about being in a fight with the great Roy Keane. I really don't believe he ever started anything, but sometimes he didn't have the sense to just walk away."

Like the episode in Jersey with the woman hockey player, Keane's darkest moments took place when he was drunk. A friend said: "Roy had to come to terms with the fact that the drink was harming him. It's very hard when you have always enjoyed having a few pints, but he made a decision to pack it in." Tony Maher, coowner of the Templeacre Tavern and a long-standing friend, confirmed that Keane had given up alcohol. "He doesn't drink now," he said. "He still comes in, but he always sticks to mineral water. He's definitely off the drink."

Alcohol may well be one of Keane's demons, but no one ever imagined it affected his performance on the pitch. Is that not a manifestation of some deepseated nastiness? His friends won't have it. You don't know the Roy Keane we know, they say. He is generous to a fault. He bought his mother and father a mansion overlooking the city, he has helped children in the cancer ward of the local Mercy Hospital, he has given his time to cheer up disabled children, to comfort a young man dying of Aids.

A local football coach, who asked me to use only his first name, Donal, said: "You people in England don't see the Roy Keane we see. There was a tragedy here recently when a family's house was destroyed by a fire. Two were killed. Roy was among the first to give them help. The reason he's loved so much here is because he has never forgotten his roots and he cares for his own people."

So if Roy Keane is not elementally bad - as some have suggested - what drives him to such appalling lengths? His ghostwriter Eamon Dunphy points to a line in the autobiography that, for him, comes closest to an explanation. He quotes Keane saying: "We can win stuff, but I don't get a buzz out of it. But then I get too hurt in defeat."

As he drives himself to yet more extremes of aggression, a terrible irony looms over Roy Keane. His insupportable behaviour threatens a defeat far greater than anything he has yet borne - his enforced absence from the game he loves.