How a little Keane kindness went a long way

IT is 1998, the summer is on its way, and Mickey Ward is about to play for Mid-Ulster in the opening game of the Milk Cup.

It’s a Monday night and the match is at Castlerock. The opposition is Manchester United. Ward, a 14-year-old grammar school pupil at Omagh CBS, will score a hat-trick. Those three strikes will instantly alter the course of his life. By the end of the week 14 clubs will make telephone calls to his parents’ home in Beragh. Spurs, Everton and Celtic are among the institutions seeking his signature. Ward signs a five-year deal with Leeds United.

After sitting his GCSEs, he moves to Leeds in 2000.

Ward will arrive just before Leeds embark on a famous footballing adventure. The zenith is marked by an appearance in a European Cup semi-final. The nadir, which follows swiftly afterwards, is financial ruin and the brink of extinction.

Ward will have a ringside seat for one of the biggest implosions in sport. Other Irish men play more prominent roles. David O’Leary is the face most associated with that particular era. Several of O’Leary’s famous ‘kids’ also had Irish accents. Gary Kelly, Ian Harte and Stephen McPhail were senior players when Ward was on the youth team.

Another Irish man would join the squad from Inter Milan. Ward’s memory of Robbie Keane’s first day at Elland Road is vivid. “We were in the canteen when he walked in,” says Ward. “The whole place just erupted into applause.”

In recent years, Keane has not enjoyed very kind coverage in the press. But Ward has only fond memories of a player who he speaks about with considerable affection. As a 16-year-old earning £37.50 a week, Ward had been transplanted into an English city where he was trying to make his way in the hard, cruel world of professional sport. It was a different universe from the intimacy of his native Tyrone. Robbie Keane had made a similar journey and experienced the same sense of dislocation when he moved from Tallaght to Wolverhampton.

Keane’s help was entirely practical. He invited the young Irish players to stay at his house at the weekends. “It got us out of our digs. We would play a youth game on a Saturday morning and if Leeds were playing at home, he would call over after the match and pick us up.”

The teenagers tagged along with Keane and the other first team players on nights out. After champagne at the club, it was back to Keane’s mansion for the party. Ward fails to suppress broad smiles when he reminisces about those heady nights. Keane’s pad had a private bar and two neon signs hung from the wood panelling. The bright letters spelt out Tallaghtfornia and Barkeane Mad.

Keane was also generous. Ward recalls a summer when the young Leeds players went on a holiday to Ayia Napa in Cyprus. By chance Ward bumped into Keane who was staying at the same resort. Keane handed him “about £1,000” and told him to “make sure all the lads are sorted out for drinks”.

Money had started flowing into the Premiership and the incentives were huge. Even youth team players could earn £400 a week. Yet, while the rewards for first team players could be incredibly lucrative, Ward has an acute appreciation of just difficult it could be to reach that standard. Sometimes when the senior squad was missing a few players, a few of the apprentices would be called in to make up the numbers for training games.

Ward remembers the ball being “zipped about” with astonishing precision. “You would be running about like a lost sheep. There were games when you literally wouldn’t touch the ball.”

The talent at Leeds was impressive. First team coach Brian Kidd liked to conduct a series of drills with the strikers. His cast of goal-scorers featured Keane, Robbie Fowler, Mark Viduka and Alan Smith.

Ward and his team-mates would watch from the sidelines “with their mouths gaping wide”. He admits that he was in awe of Robbie Fowler. “His ability was astonishing. He could bend it, smash it, chip it, volley it; left foot, right foot or with the head. He was a joy to watch.”

After three years at the Leeds, Ward realised that he “was never going to make it”. The fake empire at Leeds had started to collapse and he accepted a lump sum which released him from his contract.

He went back to education. After A-Levels and a degree in history and politics, he completed a conversion course in law. Ranked in the top percentile of students who sat the Law Institute exams, he is now training to be a barrister.

Ward has continued to play football and he has lined out for Omagh Town, Glentoran, and Ballymena. He is currently with Dungannon Swifts. Now and again, the 27-year-old is reminded of his past life. As he stood in the tunnel before a testimonial game between Glentoran and Manchester United, a player broke file and approached him.

It was Rio Ferdinand. The England international remembered Ward’s face from their days at Leeds.

And last week, Ward watched Robbie Keane help the Republic of Ireland qualify for Euro 2012. He remains proud of his former team-mate and gets annoyed by the criticism frequently directed at him.

“When he has stopped playing, and the pundits and the media are no longer hacking at him, they will look at his 50 odd goals and 100 odd appearances and realise that he is Ireland’s greatest ever player.”

It’s not an opinion that will garner universal agreement but it’s further evidence that a little kindness goes a long way.

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