A week on planet Roy

NOW I know that Roy Keane said that he planned to take a walk around the town on what was his first visit to the City Of The Tribes but what I actually behold on Eyre Square at about midday on Thursday is simply gob-smacking: Keano, dressed in civvies, walking down the street, hand in hand with a big burly bloke in full drag – tight floral print dress, cascading wig of blonde curls, tricky open-toed fashion sandals and pronounced five o’clock shadow.

It’s a jaw-dropping spectacle for the throngs queuing at the cash-points and the Ballybrit buses — heads swivel as people stare, point, laugh, look stunned and reach for cameras. I’m struggling to know how to react myself when, right before my eyes, there’s a strange blurry effect, like something you’d see in ‘Twilight Zone’, and Keano suddenly turns into someone I don’t know at all, just another guy with his madcap buddy having a laugh on their way to Ladies Day at the Galway Races.

In fact, now that I think about it, Keane must already be back on Wearside, having caught a 10.30 flight with his squad out of Galway this very morning at the end of their Irish mini-tour. (When asked the previous night by a local reporter if he planned to find time to hit Ballybrit himself, Keane had replied, “Not unless they have midnight races, no.”)

And so the truth finally dawns. It’s not the drink, boss, honest, just a vivid hallucination. After a week of daily access to the man, I’m clearly suffering the first, telltale symptoms of Roy Keane Withdrawal Syndrome.

Our final close encounter had been the night before, when the press of well-wishers around the tunnel at Terryland Park forced the Sunderland manager and a hic of hacks to seek sanctuary in a room the size of a broom closet for the last briefing of the week. “Everything was great,” he said of the Irish tour. “The travel arrangements were spot on, the hotels were all beautiful and we got treated fantastically well. So I’ve absolutely no complaints whatsoever – and usually I can find or two.”

For once then, Roy and the media could honestly say they have something in common. Notoriously hard to satisfy – “What, no tea and triangular sandwiches?” — we could have no complaints either about our bountiful access to the main man, which began with a pre-tour tee-up in Sunderland and continued throughout the Irish trip with daily press conferences and post-match briefings, all of them designed to take care of the varying demands of TV, radio and newspapers.

And somehow, with Keane, you never seem to run out of subject matter, whether it’s transfer negotiations, the art of management or the complicated physics of signing one’s name on a wet beer mat – the latter a subject about which he expressed public annoyance for about the only time during the week, as he protested about the demands that were made on his downtime in Cork by excitable adults with an unhealthy fixation on photographs and autographs.

He exempted kids from his controlled tirade, which is just as well since at times he inspired something close to pop idol hysteria in the course of his travels. An especially memorable scene unfolded at Terryland Park during the open training session on Tuesday. The place was full of little ‘uns and when Keane walked onto the pitch, the shrieks were deafening. He made his way over to the front of the splendid new stand, where boys and girls were straining over the hoardings and getting more excited with every step he took in their direction. Finally, some of them could contain themselves no longer and vaulted onto the pitch to form a little scrum around Keane on the sideline, brandishing shirts and pictures and scraps of paper for signing.

WITH the stewards caught napping, the sight prompted a full-scale pitch invasion from all four sides of the ground, the mad Pied Piper effect forcing Keane to retreat quickly to the centre-circle only for his every move to be followed by a swirling shoal of tiny tots. Eventually order was restored but not before some of us were struck by the realisation that, for a lot of these younger fans, Saipan would mean about as much as it did for the rest of us prior to 2002.

A Sunderland official had mentioned to the local press upon arrival in Ireland that she hoped we weren’t going to bring up World Cup 2002 and “all that stuff again.” Truthfully, it never really entered our heads, a measure perhaps of how much we’ve all finally caught up with the main protagonists, but also a reflection of the new realities facing Roy Keane and those who are paid to write about him. Where once it was all Keano and Mick and Quinny, now it’s all Keano and Fergie and Jose. With the shock of his arrival on Wearside having faded, the Irish angle on Keane has altered. ‘A Love Supreme’ – the excellent fanzine which brought out its first ever pre-season issue to mark both the Irish tour and the tenth anniversary of the Stadium Of Light – likes to refer to the new era as “the coming together of two great nations, Sunderland and Ireland’.

Not everyone on this side agrees. Even in Turner’s Cross, where Keane enjoyed the expected homecoming hero’s welcome, the Rebel Army gleefully taunted the visiting Mackems with chants of ‘You’re not English anymore’ and finished the night by repeatedly singing the praises of supporting your local team.

At Dalymount Park, there had even been boos for Keane and a more overtly abusive and personal edge to the terrace sledging, something which prompted him to remark the following day that “every club has a few scumbags.” Later, it would emerge that he was somewhat concerned at his robust choice of words but any worries he might have had about a tabloid storm in a tea-cup were dispelled when he dropped a little bombshell into his press conference the following afternoon in Cork.

Asked about the latest transfer moves, he replied: “We’re looking at someone not too far from here…”

How far exactly?

“Um, about 20 yards,” he teased.

With most of assuming that the player’s move to Fulham was virtually a done deal, it took another second or two for the Roy O’Donovan penny to drop. And so began one of the week’s most protracted sub-plots, although no-one is in any doubt the saga will end with Keane and Sunderland getting their man.

In the great Premiership scheme of things, it might seem like small enough beer and when Keane explained his U-turn on the player – 48 hours before, he’d said Sunderland would pass – he did so in almost casual terms, suggesting that it was something akin to a middle-of-the-night “gut-feeling” which had prompted him to make his late, late bid.

More likely, with Sunderland finding themselves caught in the Premiership’s financial squeeze, Keane had Irish international Kevin Doyle prominent in his mind, another Cork City winger turned striker whose move to Reading has proved to be one of the Premiership bargains of recent years.

While Paul McShane’s arrival on Wearside the day before the Irish tour was a real boost for the club, the evidence of the games against Bohemians and Cork suggested that the Black Cats can struggle in front of goal. Even the 4-0 win in Galway flattered the visitors so Keane has nothing to lose by taking a punt on another proven eircom League goal-getter.

Pre-season friendlies are notoriously poor barometers of form and potential, so perhaps not too much should be read into Sunderland’s underwhelming displays. Today, they will need to go up another gear for the visit of Juventus but even that glamour tie will have no bearing on the serious business to come, beginning with the visit of Spurs to the Stadium of Light next Saturday.

One thing’s for sure, Roy Keane is giving no hostages to fortune. Asked for the umpteenth time on Wednesday night what his ambitions for the season are, he replied: “With the attitude the players are showing, hopefully we’ll have a good season – whatever that might be.”

If not the whole world, then at least two great nations will be eager as he is to find out.