Tom Humphries on a month of sleepless nights, cultural surprises, the fall and rise of Keane R, expected tabloid fireworks which failed to go off,and games, but not just for the players

Fragments recovered from a month in the sunshine and a few days in the rain.

It is May 17th. It's raining like it means it. Sheets of it. You have to really want to vote to get up and walk out in this. At the airport there is a small knot of people waiting to see the team off. Bertie Ahern, some leprechauns and the usual rubber-neckers. If it's the start of a great adventure nobody feels that way.

The plane is late. The plane is crowded. Not to worry, there are two more planes to be caught today so it won't be getting better. It's Dublin-Amsterdam. Amsterdam-Tokyo. Tokyo-Saipan. Word drifting down to those of us hacks on RoyWatch are that he is grouchy this morning. In Tokyo airport on the layover, the lads stretch his patience. Shay Given slips a tape of Today FM's Radio Roy show into a ghetto blaster. Everyone waits. Roy laughs. Big laughs. Everyone else laughs. Huge laughs.

Saipan is hot and sweaty. We've been travelling for 23 hours. A little belcher of a bus takes us from the airport where flower garlands have come along with the stamps on the passport.

The towns look like Eastern Bloc Europe would if it was transplanted to a pacific island. We pass a big mall of "duty free shops". "Genuinely lads," purrs Ray Treacy who has been imparting titbits about island life over the microphone, "that is duty free shopping. Lit-er-ally duty free."

"Ray," says somebody from the back, "we've done 23 hours and come through four f****** airports for a duty free mall?"

Chronicle of a bad time foretold. It is a couple of nights later. We are in a bar. An eminent journalist stands with a spoon in his mouth. He faces a famous international footballer who also has a spoon in his mouth. Both men have their hands clasped behind their back. Showdown. They are going to go spoono a spoono.

The famous footballer, we'll call him Stan, bows his head first. The eminent journalist, lets just call him K, attempts to hit Stan on the top of the head using the spoon which he, K, holds in his mouth. K pulls his head back and swings the spoon down but his teeth have little purchase on the spoon and it bounces off Stan's hair.

"Okay," says Stan, "my turn."

K, the eminent journalist, smiles thinly and bows his head. Suddenly, racked with suspicion, he glances up, but Stan is there with the spoon in his teeth and his hands behind his back rolling his head as if he were loosening his neck muscles. "You're either going to play the game or you aren't," says Stan.

"Okay," says K.

He bows his head again. And then Stan's accomplice, call him Discopants, leans across and whacks K mightily on the top of the head with a heavy spoon which he has concealed in his hand.

"Jaysus," says K, straightening himself up and rubbing his aching nonce, "but you're good at this Stan. Give us another go." So it continues. Roy Keane is asleep in his bed across the road, not knowing what he is missing.

Half a week passes. It is Thursday and apart from the night of the fabulous spoonfighting there have been precious few good nights' sleep had in the journalists' hotel. Too late it has been realised that the deadline advantage is actually a nightmare. You get up in the morning and watch the team train and then at around midnight the office clocks on at home and starts ordering stuff.

Then of course there is Roy Keane. He's going. He's staying. He's going again.

Thursday night and the media are summoned to the team hotel. You know the news is going to be bad because there are no smiles and because Eircom don't have their banner up behind the table where the press conference will be held. Roy is gone. Mick McCarthy is grey around the face but eerily serene, like those people you meet at funerals who are on sedation for shock.

Hardened men from the team staff are milling around the lobby. They shake their heads. Can't tell you what Roy said but I've never heard anyone spoken to like that.

Next morning we move on but a handful remain in the slim hope that Roy will dally a while and answer some questions. The hotel management help him give everyone the slip. At the airport he comes through with brand new luggage. Every bit of Umbro gear and Ireland kit has been jettisoned. Who has the presence of mind to do that?

Japan. Izumo. Country people who can't do enough for anyone. Journalists are fighting the usual war. Filing on foreign phones. Getting receipts. To file you have to buy a telecard which you put into a box on top of the TV. This gives you an outside line and pornography on the TV. As an incentive device it is demeaning.

Five English journalists go out for dinner and eat well - nothing raw, nothing domesticated being the gastronomic rule they live by when away. At the end of the meal the bill comes. Everyone throws in the right amount. The receipt comes. Just one. Consternation.

"Five copies please." Shrug of shoulders. Baffled look. Linguist intervenes. "FIVE COPIES PLEASE!" Another blank, half-terrified look. How have I failed you as a waiter.

A professor of linguistics steps forward. "FIVE," he shouts holding up fingers. "COP-EES. PUH-LEASE!"

"Ah yes," says the waiter, "FIVE!" And everyone bows and the waiter beetles off to set about his task which he completes in minutes and returns, drumroll please, with a tray of five coffees. Beaten men, the journalists drink up and leave.

The day the Keane saga ends is a long one. The full melodrama of Tommie Gorman's interview is conveyed to us via a phone held to a telly somewhere in Dublin. We get back to our rooms and begin working. At dawn we realise there's still time to get the FAI's reaction into the newspapers. A convoy of us stalebreaths set out across Izumo and surround the team hotel.

You know the rest. Inadvertent release of players' statement. Behind-the-scenes negotiations continue. Brendan Menton's efforts to stop Mick McCarthy from saying anything he might regret. Finally, at 4:40 next morning a statement from Roy arrives. This hack is asleep in his chair, laptop glowing, when the phone rings.

Up and down the hallway doors are open, hacks are dozing and phones are ringing and outside the birds are beginning to chirp. If we had our time again we'd have opted for heavy-lifting jobs, but apparently at home it's been a big story. Haven't people little to be doing, we tell each other.

Niigata. It's eggshells now really. We go behind to Cameroon. Come back and draw. Who knows if this is good or bad. Mick McCarthy comes into the mixed zone and he's decided it's good.

We hacks second that emotion. There's a 100-quid sweetener for anyone who'll say: "Do you think we'd have won if Roy was playing?" but it goes unclaimed. We flee Niigata immediately.

Chiba. Concrete city. The place has been reclaimed from the sea and if the sea had any decency at all it would claim it back. It's a soulless concrete wasteland and a plate of "mixed sausages" in the hotel requires a second mortgage to be arranged. To the disgust of the management who shut the hotel down at nine sharp every night the Irish, ever adaptable, begin to treat the vending machines in the lobby as a 24-hour pub and at any hour of the night or day you can catch friends lolling around the place with tinnies in hand.

The team have settled into life without Keano. His name has become a bad word and is never used in the presence of players or management. His image has been removed from the back of the team bus in a gesture which reminds one of those empty plinths you see in places like Bucharest.

A few of us have the serious experience of sitting in front of a brother of Mick McCarthy's at training one day. Mick is on the pitch but his brother speaks with the same voice, intonation and gruffness. It's stereo mac and we spend the day wondering what Christmas Day with the McCarthys must be like.

"Hey, I'll tell you what. Them socks will do for me. Aye, and there's a pair of them an all."

"Well, if they don't match, I'll tell you what, I'll put me backside in Burton's windows over a bacon slicer."

"You lot'll probably twist that some way to suit yourselves."

"Who're you talking to Mick? You hearing them press voices again?"

Bus to Ibaraki. Last-minute goal against the Germans. We know the routine by now. One-all draws are good. We're practically throwing streamers at the team when they come through. Oliver Kahn stops and talks. He blames Oliver Bierhoff for the Irish goal. We can't believe it. Footballers never blame each other any more. We race back to see the replay. About 30 seconds before the Irish goal, Bierhoff fails to control a ball which flies at him near the sideline and Ireland win a throw. For this he shall be shot? We wouldn't be able to field a side for the third game if we Irish operated on such an unforgiving basis.

The Germany game is big news at home, apparently. Mounting excitement, apparently. Italia '90 only bigger, the office says. Just keep sending copy, the office says.

The team are getting bored and getting slightly cranky, too. Access is increasingly limited, which is a small mercy because questions are running out. One day, there is a quiver of excitement in the ranks. The big hitter from the newspages of the Sun has asked for directions to the daily press conference. He's coming out from Tokyo. He has a question he wants to ask.

We anticipate that the question will unleash a seismic controversy at least the size of the Goodbye Mr Keano affair. The sports sappers from the Sun are a little nervy lest they be mowed down in an indiscriminate backlash from the players.

The press conference draws record numbers. The big hitter is standing over by the wall. He looks primed. The usual questions are lobbed in. What do ye think of the ball? Have ye been into town? It's all just foreplay though, we're waiting for your man to toss his grenade.

Final question, says Trevor O'Rourke, who is running the show. "Yes," booms the big hitter, "over here. This is for all four of you players."

We pause. Mercy, but this is going to be big. More sleepless nights beckon. This could derail the whole thing. It'll be raining seven types of shit by lunchtime.

"What," says the big hitter, "do each of ye think . . ."

Yes. Yes. Yes. What do they think of these allegations of bestiality. He's going to make them deny that they mess around with farm animals. What do they think of Osama bin Laden being invited to play central midfield.

What do they think of the news that they have each been filmed snorting cocaine out of the belly button of Mick Byrne. Yes. What do they think of the third secret of Fatima being about Richard Dunne.

"What do each of ye think," says he and he pauses again for effect, "of the fans."

For crying out loud. Our backsides are off the seats before the players can reply.

"Smelly, fickle and tedious," say the players. Of course.

Yokohama. Saudi Arabia 0, Ireland 3. Duffer does a little celebration which must have burned at least three calories and says afterwards: "You just go mad, don't you." Robbie Keane does a little bow-and-arrow number at the end of his somersaulting. Soon they'll need time added on at the end of games to allow Robbie get through his post-goal routine. Gary Breen scores the best Irish goal of the tournament and many and lame are the little jokes about the unemployed footballer.

Seoul. We are staying downtown. We hardly see the players any more. Of course that hurts the players' feelings but we have to be firm. After a month we feel entitled to our privacy. No more interviews lads, we're sorry. No more photo opportunities. We've co-operated enough.

On the second night here the Koreans play and the streets have to be closed down to traffic for half a day before the game. Everyone wears the same type of red T-shirt. Everyone goes mad in a quiet Duffer-like way and then they go home.

The photographers have found a club called Woodstock which is contained in a building which is a one-stop shop for all of life's experiences, comprising as it does, a church, a brothel and a rock and roll stage. It's like the old Emo Phillips joke concerning the kid who prayed to God every night for a bike till he finally realised that God didn't operate that way, so the kid went and stole one and asked for forgiveness.

The Woodstock allows its regulars to walk home every morning with a soul as fresh and new as the dawn.

We travel to the southern gateway of Seoul for our Suwon Song. We have worked ourselves into a fever telling each other that we quietly fancy that we'll get a result here. There is consternation in the press box when the Spaniards drop Nadal. We'd planned on them playing Nadal. They can't drop Nadal. Somebody complain to FIFA.

The penalty shootout has a curiously fatalistic feel about it. There's no way Robbie Keane can take them all so there's no way we can win. We watch the Irish spray the ball about creatively but not usefully, and then go down to gather the losing quotes. All Irish adventures end up in these circumstances, players being hounded by hacks for sad, sum-it-all-up quotes.

In fairness the boys are good. They'd talk all night if they didn't plan to drink all night.

Next day we have the final press conference with Mick McCarthy. As a surreal touch it is held in a huge boardroom containing a massive oval table with a microphone at every seat. Every hack who comes in has a joke.

"This is captain Picard of the star shot enterprise."

"On behalf of da five families, I'da jus' like to say that no way can we take this matta of the shooting of Johnny Big Guts lying down."

"I'm sorry counsel, but my client wishes to assert his right not to answer that question on the grounds that it may incriminate him."

Best joke belongs to our pal from the Examiner, who pretends we are the board of Pfizer, the makers of Viagra, and begins pointing the microphones straight at the ceiling.

By the time Mick comes in we are all giggly and restless. We ask the usual follow-up stuff. He says he'll stay. Roy Keane's name gets mentioned for the first time in weeks. Mick's happy. We've got stuff to do. At least we don't have to go to The Park to see Joe. Nobody deserves that.

Mick leaves and for some reason we all clap. We think it will make him like us when the European Championship start. Just to be safe, we begin making up a list of those who refrained from clapping and send it to Roy.

Who knows . . .