Keane saddened by exile Ireland

Roy Keane shares Niall Quinn’s disappointment at Stephen Ireland’s international exile — insisting representing Ireland should rank as the high point of a player’s career.

Keane’s fellow Corkman has declined to line out for his country since 2007, with Martin O’Neill revealing in May the Stoke City player hasn’t returned his calls.

In his latest autobiography, The Second Half, which Keane will officially launch today at the Lansdowne Road Stadium, the Ireland assistant boss echoed the contrast made by Quinn between the degree of commitment shown to the Irish cause by Ireland to a warrior like Davy Langan during the 1980s.

“Niall made the point on television recently,” writes Keane. “Davy Langan would have turned up for Ireland games with his leg hanging off and say ‘I’m fit’. I think Niall was contrasting Davy’s attitude to Stephen Ireland’s and how things have changed.

“Playing for your country used to be the pinnacle of a player’s career; now it’s playing in the Champions League. Maybe I got lost in that world. I need to remember that most of our players won’t be playing in the Champions League. Playing for Ireland will be the pinnacle of their careers. I need to remind myself about going to Dalymount as a kid, on the bus, to see Ireland play.”

Keane’s best memory of visiting the Phibsboro venue was the 1983 European Championship qualifier against the Netherlands, a game he attended with his Rockmount United team-mates after his hat-trick in the U12 Val O’Connor tournament final earned them the trip.

The Corkman uses his recollections of that raucous night to rile his colleague Seamus McDonagh now that the pair are united in O’Neill’s backroom team.

“As a kid of 11 or 12, I’d watched Seamus play for Ireland at Dalymount,” said Keane. “I came up from Cork with my team Rockmount United on a Wednesday night. I was telling Seamus about it. ‘Were you playing in that game, Seamus? ‘I was’.

“It was Ruud Gullit’s first game for Holland and we lost 3-2. I slagged Seamus about it. ‘You threw a few in that night, Seamus’, I said to him.”

“But Seamus played in that game and now I’m working with Seamus. It’s brilliant.”

Keane also claims his and O’Neill’s similar life and career graph made them a natural fit to eventually work together in management.

“There were strange quirks, little coincidences,” Keane reasons. “Martin had been up at Celtic and I’d had a spell playing there. Martin managed Sunderland, I’d managed Sunderland. He played under Brian Clough, so did I.

“Martin’s really into American football and I used to watch it on Channel 4 on a Sunday night when I was a kid. My grandmother used to go mad when I turned it on.

“Martin’s Irish and I’m Irish. One of his daughters is called Alana and my daughter is called Alanna. Maybe that’s why he gave me the job!”

The pair had initially connected from their battles as managerial adversaries.

“I was managing Sunderland and Martin was in charge of Aston Villa,” explains Keane. “We played against them, twice at Villa and once at home, before I lost my job.

“After the games, there’d be the usual get-togethers in the office. There was Martin, his assistant John Robertson and his staff. I liked his staff; there was warmth to them.

“Then we started working together for ITV. Maybe it was down to Cloughie but, when we spoke about football, we had similar ideas about how the game should be played.”

Keane added: “I watch the way Martin speaks to the players now and how he handles the staff. I’m not saying it’s perfect or that I’ll copy it. I’m just going, ‘I like that, I’m not sure about that, I like that…’.”