“That’s the one thing in my career I should have done - enjoyed it a bit more. But then again, if I did, I probably wouldn’t have been the player I was.”

It was a reflective Roy Keane who spoke to Liam Mackey in Dublin yesterday, a football icon aware that the end is nigh.

IT’S become a way to mark the passing of the seasons, Roy Keane’s annual appearance in Dublin to support a fund-raising initiative for a charity close to his heart, the Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind.

And the event has also come to double as something of a state of the nation address, an opportunity for the Corkman to face the press and tease out some of the big issues of the day.