Former team-mates must bury hatchet

YOU can already hear people humming the theme tune to The Odd Couple.

Chairman Quinny and Gaffer Keano – who could ever have predicted this double act? If last night’s sensational news is confirmed, Niall Quinn has pulled off the most unlikely coup in securing Roy Keane’s services as the new manager of struggling Sunderland.

Here, after all, are two men who were widely perceived to be on opposite banks of the great divide which opened up on the island of Saipan in 2002. Mick McCarthy may have been Keane’s nemesis in Irish sport’s greatest ever civil war, but it seemed as if Niall Quinn wasn’t too far behind.

You only have to check Keano, the autobiography ghostwritten by Eamon Dunphy, to find the smouldering evidence. When Keane wrote about being let down by his team mates in the aftermath of his ferocious bust-up with McCarthy, Niall Quinn was one of those at whom he pointed the finger. “Stan and Quinny, Kells, Packie. They all knew the score. Stand up, lads, give me a dig out. I looked around at them. Sitting there. Stand up? No chance.”

And again, he refers to a visit to his room by Quinn and Steve Staunton. “Stan and Quinny. What the fuck do these two muppets want, I wondered… Quinn: ‘We can’t believe you’re going to miss the World Cup: we’re gutted for you.’ Cowards, I thought. They said fuck-all when they had their chance.”

Sifting through Roy’s back pages, it’s not hard to come to the conclusion that the Dubliner was never high on the Corkman’s Christmas card list.

But then we are talking about the past and people do change. In Dublin earlier this year, doing work for the Guide Dogs For The Blind charity, Keane spoke about how maybe there had been too many “tackles” in that book.

In the absence of more detail about how the deal to bring him to Sunderland has been put together, we have to assume that time has healed and fences have been mended. But if the two men are to move forward, they will have to sing from the same hymn sheet as never before.

Sunderland, habitually referred to as the as the sleeping giants of English football, have been close to comatose this season, beginning their campaign with five straight defeats. Quinn stood in the breach for as long as he could, but always sought to assure fans that when the right man came along, he would step down as manager to concentrate on his job as chairman.

Yesterday, in Dublin, he went further, saying that the new boss would be “a great attraction, the perfect man for the club” and someone who would convince the long-suffering supporters that Quinn and his new board were serious about reviving the fortunes of the famous old club. What he didn’t say was that the new man would also, by any standards, represent a sensational appointment, one that was guaranteed to make front page as well as back page news.

But once the hysteria has subsided, it will be on those back pages that the real significance of Roy Keane’s appointment will be recorded. Like Steve Staunton at international level, he will be a rookie manager stepping in at the deep end. No-one will underestimate his intelligence or will to win but this time he won’t be able to lead by example on the pitch.

It is exciting to have him back but he only has to look at Niall Quinn and, before him, Mick McCarthy, to know that managing Sunderland is not for the faint-hearted.