O’Neill unfazed by Keane’s page turner

It’s a pretty safe bet that the assistant manager of Ireland will command more column inches and airspace than the assistant manager of Gibraltar before the two countries meet in their Euro 2016 qualifier at the Aviva on Saturday, October 11.

And not least because, just two days before that, Roy Keane’s new autobiography, ‘The Second Half’, will have hit the bookstores.

Asked yesterday if he was concerned that publication of the book might prove a bit of a distraction in the run-up to the Gibraltar game, and the next match away to Germany, Martin O’Neill, as is his wont, opted to go for the funny bone: “Somebody asked me had I vetted the book and the answer is I wasn’t going to go to all that trouble,” he said. “But listen, at the end of the day, if he is giving dog’s abuse out, I’ll just dump him! Ya know? Send him on home — depending on who he is giving the abuse to, I suppose.”

Having paused to reassure FAI press officer Peter Sherrard that he was “only having a joke”, O’Neill warmed to his theme.

“I’m sure it will probably cause some consternation and we just have to go and live with it, if that’s the case,” he said.

“I would have a word with him if he is seriously thinking about putting that out and feeling that he’s going to be stealing the headlines from our game, I might have a word with him about that.”

Is he looking forward to reading it??

“Well, it’s Roy’s second autobiography, you know (laughs) and I think that he will, will he not, join Wayne Rooney in having as many autobiographies as you want?

“I’m sure at some stage or other, I’ll pick it up. (But) do you know this, I must admit I’ve read very few autobiographies. I’ve read one: (Hungarian legend) Ferenc Puskas, who was my favourite player as a kid. I loved him. And he could keep a tennis ball up 200 times and I used to think, ‘if I could keep a tennis ball up, I would be as good as him’. And I could when I was 11 but I wasn’t as good as Ferenc Puskas.

“I don’t read that many autobiographies and people who have more than one, well, they must have a couple of lives. Yeah, so there we go.”

O’Neill also dealt lightly with Jack Grealish’s allegation that Stephen Quinn had called him “a fake Paddy” during Hull’s recent game with Aston Villa.

(Grealish, it must be said, made light of it himself at the time, while Quinn subsequently denied he’d made the remark at all).

For his part, O’Neill was clearly not of mind to turn a minor drama into a crisis.

“I was wondering how it was said, whether it was a tongue in cheek remark or a humorous remark or whatever the case may be or if there was a serious intonation to it,” he said. “I can’t say that I know Stephen Quinn that well but I would be a wee bit surprised if he said it.”

And then, maintaining a straight face, O’Neill concluded: “(But) it’s not too late to leave Quinn out of the squad. If he’s going to annoy a young player who might play for us and that causes him not to play, I’ll leave Quinn out!”