Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. My wife was more annoyed than I was watching the film about Saipan.
Brianne saw it for what it was, a fictional account of actual events largely from the perspective of an imaginary Roy Keane.
Mainly she was upset by my running commentary.
“That didn’t happen.”
“That definitely didn’t happen.”
“A banana boat, Christ, Mick would never allow that!”
The sauna scenes are made up, as far as I know, but I chuckled away.
There used to be a drinking culture within the Republic of Ireland squad but it was long gone before we qualified for the 2002 World Cup. Sure, we met up for a few pints when the players landed in Dublin in advance of an international week. But that was it.
Steve Coogan as Mick McCarthy and Éanna Hardwicke as Roy Keane in the Saipan film. Photograph: Aidan Monaghan/PA
The record needs to be set straight on a few falsehoods so that people learning about Saipan, via the film, do not think we were a pub team on tour. We reached the last 16 at the tournament without the best midfielder in the world.
There was an ill-judged barbecue on the island that the travelling media attended. The film has Roy fuming from his balcony as we did the conga night after night. Bullsh*t. We had the one session and Roy was there; I remember him being annoyed that the hacks were invited but he moved on with us to play darts in a local pub. He was in grand form.
I can tell you that no Irish player popped a bottle of champagne in my presence until Gary Doherty’s credit card was declined at Lillie’s Bordello sometime around 2004. Stephen Carr had to bail Doc out after he momentarily lost the run of himself and ordered the finest bottle the old Dublin haunt had in stock. We twisted the yarn into Gary trying to pay a €500 tab with his Tesco club card.
We were not pissheads. Such an overt suggestion is an insult to the non-drinkers and gym-obsessed players in the group, such as Kenny Cunningham, Clinton Morrison, Lee Carsley and Steve Finnan.
Steve Coogan as a fictionalised version of Mick McCarthy. Photograph: Aidan Monaghan/PA
I’m not sure if the film-makers talked to any of my team-mates. I must give Stephen Reid a bell as his character got a one-on-one scene with Éanna Hardwicke’s impressive version of Keane when they discussed the merits of reading books by the pool.
Again, for the record, Irish footballers in 2002 could not only read, we did plenty of it to pass the time, as the smartphone had not been invented.
Niall Quinn was my roommate in Saipan. He should steer clear of this interpretation of him as a hapless idiot. Quinny is one of the most intelligent players I’ve ever met.
Not sure about the Fiona McCarthy character either. Fiona is an incredible woman, the rock Mick would lean on when times were tough, but the entire narrative about her husband being a bumbling manager who was easily cowed is complete nonsense.
Mick took zero crap from the FAI blazers. He has always been a leader of men, a hero to young lads like me who grew up on a diet of Euro 88 and Italia 90. He deserves a better reflection than Steve Coogan’s character and the script’s interpretation of events.
The height difference was annoying. Roy didn’t loom over Mick. Nobody did.
I’m biased when it comes to Mick McCarthy. Always will be, especially when a work of fiction portrays him in this way.
It is a funny movie. Not to be mixed up with a serious one that is in pursuit of the facts. Did I mention the FAI man guzzling champagne in the sauna? Ah bejaysus, the Irish are gas craic, aren’t we?
The showdown in the team meeting embellishes what actually happened. It needs to be said as many times as possible that Roy did not call Mick an “English c**t”. The C-word was used, repeatedly, but I think the lads born in England would remember Roy prefacing it with “English”.
He did say that Mick should not be managing “my country”. Roy still lives in England. He raised his family in England.
Happenstance had me sat between Roy and Mick when it all blew up. They were not eyeball to eyeball.
I remember the row clearly. Myself, Niall and Stevie Finnan were late down for food so we took the last empty table. Roy arrived after us. He is never late, so that was strange. He sat next to me and said “It is going to go off”. And I said “What do you mean?” but he cut me off.
We’d heard about The Irish Times interview without reading it.
There was a guy playing Hawaiian music on a Spanish guitar next door. Gary Kelly brought him into the room and some lads were dancing when Mick arrived.
Mick was on my right-hand side, so I had to slide around to see him, and with Roy over my left shoulder, it felt like Mick was looking at me, but he was looking straight at Roy when he pulled out a few sheets of paper. “Roy, I want to address this,” he said. “I think you owe the players an apology for this piece.”
That was it. Boom. Roy piled into Mick for what seemed an eternity. To this day, it still feels like none of us should have been privy to the Ireland manager and captain airing their differences. It needed to happen in a room with one or two mediators. Such as Mick Byrne or whoever.
The tension between them had been building for years.
Roy, clearly, felt cornered by Mick, and Roy Keane only knows one way out of a tight spot.
He took it that Mick accused him of feigning injury for the second leg in Iran. But that was not said in the meeting. Mick did say he played for Manchester United the Saturday after missing Tehran, which he did.
Roy replied: “You had an agreement with Alex Ferguson that I was only going to play one game.”
After Keane’s diatribe, McCarthy said: “Roy, it is either you go or I go and I am going nowhere.” Roy stood up and said “all the best”, shook hands with Stevie Finnan and walked out.
I still wish I’d said or done something before it got that far.
My issue with the film is its inaccuracies. There are too many. It’s worth knowing what really happened before going to see this cartoonish version of Saipan.