Keane saga still casts a cloud

SOCCER/Euro 2004 Qualifying: FIFA may have failed in their bid to interest Americans in football by chucking them the 1994 World Cup finals but if Oprah Winfrey takes even a passing interest in Irish soccer's current literary output then the planet's most lucrative market will surely soon be hooked on its most beautiful game.

The behaviour of some of the early 21st century's fighting Irish might, of course, be more suitable for a late night knockabout with Jerry Springer than a mid-afternoon sitting with the queen of daytime TV. However, after Saturday's latest instalment to that Saipan saga that simply refuses to die there's clearly enough life left in this yarn for everyone to get a share of the action.

Mick McCarthy, one presumes, is saving his take on it all for his own volume, which is due out later in the autumn. That at least would explain his claim yesterday that the weekend's heave-ho between the man who captained his team up to the World Cup and the one who has skippered it on its only outing since is of no consequence to him.

Not that you'd have expected the Ireland manager to react to questions about the incident by telling the press that Jason McAteer's surprise defeat of Roy Keane in Saturday's mixture of psychological and physical warfare at the Stadium of Light had been the decisive factor in clinching the former Liverpool player the Republic's continued captaincy for the campaign ahead. But some expression of regret that Ireland's ongoing World Cup hangover has replaced the story of Posh and Becks as the soap opera of Premier League football might have had a slightly better ring to it.

Instead McCarthy simply told us that the tussle "doesn't impinge on what I'm trying to do. It's something that's happened between the two players and of no concern to me."

McAteer, as it happens had, just a few minutes earlier, been deeply upset by a front page newspaper follow-up to the incident. Further evidence, as if any was needed, that Keane's departure from the Irish camp and its aftermath casts a shadow over the start of this new campaign just as it did over the end of the last one.

Keane's attacks aside, both those made in print and on the pitch, McCarthy had some cause for satisfaction as just about all of the players called up for this weekend's opening European Championship qualifier in Moscow arrived in Dublin to begin their preparations.

Shay Given and Phil Babb did not train, Given because he had played the previous night, Babb because of a minor knee problem, while John O'Shea is only due to join the party this morning. However, it appears the Republic of Ireland will be as close to full strength as the manager could have hoped.

The weekend brought some potentially good news, too, with Robbie Keane's move to a club where they are unlikely to pay £7 million and then leave him sitting in the dug-out. "I'm happy for him if it works out," said McCarthy when asked about the move to Tottenham Hotspurs, "because we see the best of Robbie when he's playing regularly."

As he made fairly clear Kevin Kilbane will start against the Russians despite his lack of first-team opportunities at Sunderland of late, though, McCarthy emphasised once again it is the spirit this team possesses that he sees as the key to its continued success.

"Somebody told me a while ago there's something unique about this group and I think he was right," he said. "There's a willingness to graft for each other, to come here and do everything for their country and I think we'll see that again in the games we have to come."

He has said more than once before his Irish team are now in the position sides like Croatia and Holland were in when they played the Republic immediately after strong showings in major championships. Yesterday, though, he argued the Russians were in a very different position to Ireland's on those occasions.

"We're not playing somebody who narrowly missed out on qualification," he remarked. "Russia have been to the same World Cup that we have been to, as it happens their campaign was probably seen as a disappointment, but I think the fact that they've been there tends to cancel out the fatigue factor that we benefited from before."

With videos of the Russians in action and a report on their recent friendly against Sweden from Seamas McDonagh to mull over, McCarthy says he is still weighing up Ireland's rivals and he seemed surprised the Russian goalkeeper, Ruslan Nigmatullin, already felt sure enough of the Irish approach to claim the Republic were a dirty side whose armoury regularly included use of the elbow.

"How many bookings did we get in the World Cup finals?" McCarthy asked. "Or the qualifiers for that matter. How many times has he seen us play?"

Nigmatullin, of course, may simply have been mistakenly relying on the evidence of the weekend, little realising that Keane is in international exile and that in any case he saves that sort of treatment for his fellow Irishmen.