Denis Walsh:
For a career that had been one of the greatest noises in the history of Irish sport, the conclusion was almost soundless. Set against the booming symphony of a World Cup, Roy Keane's final medical bulletin was a faraway whisper. Reaction was practised and predictable because in reality all of the heartfelt goodbyes had already been said.
Finishing with Ireland, leaving Manchester United, shuffling to the side, no longer able to summon the empowering athleticism of his pomp, no longer able to occupy and command the very centre of football matches: that was when it ended. This week was just tedious paperwork.
Behind it all he probably couldn't stomach another season in the nursing-home phase of his career, being tended to by younger legs, fetching and carrying for him. And yet the value placed on him in his declining years eloquently defined his worth; above and apart from his physical attributes Keane was all about presence, influence, aura, attitude, things that couldn't be measured by the Opta index but were felt by everybody in his orbit.
At the beginning of last season Sir Alex Ferguson adjusted United's formation to facilitate Keane's athletic decay and maybe delay his mortality as an elite player. He didn't believe it was an impossible accommodation or a fruitless punt. The spirit of Keane on a football pitch was what Ferguson was desperately trying to preserve because that was the essence of him as a footballer.
He wasn't known for killer passes, for long, flighted, cross-field deliveries, for trickery. He didn't do dribbles, he surged. He didn't idle through matches, waiting for his time to make a game-breaking play: he wouldn't, he couldn't. Others enjoyed spells in matches or moments of brilliance: Keane needed a rolling engagement with the play for his influence to count.
His game was a giant tableau of essential things: tackles, covering runs, endless availability and simple passes. Look at his performances, frame by frame. Keane scarcely made a pass that was outside the range or vision of anybody else on the field. So how come it mattered so much when he did it? Because he had perfected it. This was his art. He would make those passes more accurately, more often than anybody else and in this way he affected games, incrementally, irresistibly. If it was easy, everybody would be at it.
Keane gave teams shape and security. He was the north star from which his teammates took their bearings. None of that is glamorous but he was the antithesis of glamour.
As a person he is more complex than we will ever know. There was a time when we would have referred to his "demons" — sometimes in mitigation, sometimes in condemnation — offering the phrase as a pathetic mask for our ignorance of what he was really like.
Like other gifted people, he was indulged to excess. At times his treatment of Mick McCarthy was unacceptable; for sure, when Keane enters management, no player will ever treat him like that. Self-righteousness, in anybody, is repugnant and in him it was tolerated without question; his abuse of referees was appalling and all of it was forgiven in the name of his talent.
But his greatness is beyond question. This week a giant left the arena.