Keane laughs off last week's rumours

SOCCER ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE NEWS:A SERENE and smiling Roy Keane yesterday laughed at the hysterical events of the previous Friday when Keane was rumoured to have stormed out of Sunderland's training ground and tendered his resignation.

Keane was actually in a meeting in Manchester at the time and said he was bemused to see Phil Babb in particular talking with authority about an alleged "bust-up". Babb was damned with irony yesterday.

"I found it quite funny," Keane said, "crazy, absolutely crazy. I have had stuff about my players but that was the first about me. I was in Manchester at a meeting on the Friday.

"You take it all with a pinch of salt but when you get people working for a certain TV station saying they know for a fact there was a bust-up on the training ground, it is sad."

That was a reference to Babb. "Jesus Christ," Keane said, "if I start losing sleep over Phil Babb I am in trouble. Years ago Phil Babb was in trouble for jumping on cars in Dublin. I was captain of Ireland at the time. He was getting ripped to bits. I was doing the media and I said: 'What is the big deal? Give the lad a break'. He didn't murder anyone . . . Babbsy is prone to coming up with all sorts of stuff."

Sunderland won at Blackburn last Saturday, thereby defusing a lot of the speculation surrounding Keane. They face West Ham tomorrow and Keane spoke warmly of Gianfranco Zola, another young manager experiencing difficult times. Keane said Zola was so nice a man he "did not want to kick him" as a player.

Keane stressed, not for the first time recently, the importance of physical fitness. He had harsh words for "Irish and Scottish" players in that regard.

"The foreign lads, that's the way they've been brought up. The English lads are not too bad. The biggest problems are the Irish and Scottish players, that's because of how they're brought up. That's how I was, eating rubbish, drinking rubbish. It's trying to change that mentality."

Northern Ireland manager Nigel Worthington's post-match comments on Wednesday about the poor fitness of some of his players was put to Keane. One of them is Sunderland's David Healy, who has frequently not even made the bench since joining in August. Healy was not mentioned by name by Worthington or, yesterday, by Keane. Nor was Andy Reid.

"A lot can be fitter," Keane said, "but they have the excuse that they're not playing. But they can still be fitter - swimming, doing extra weights, getting body fat down. Get yourselves fitter and you might get into the team. No one should be able to throw that at you. That must hurt players."