In playing at home, John Aizlewood's enjoyable if masochistic pilgrimage through an English league season, there's a line that has always rankled. 'Thus Roy Keane, so thick that even other footballers must notice...' Admittedly the writer was describing one of Keane's more infamous moments, the initial tackle at Elland Road which would be the genesis of his blood feud with Alfe Inge Haaland. But still...
Perhaps the mood of the time excuses Aizlewood. He was writing a few seasons ago when it was still fashionable to caricature Keane as an all-drinking, all-fighting source of fodder to redtop newspapers. Perhaps. What seems certain, though, is that late in the day that perception has changed. It has taken 15 tumultuous seasons, but finally English football can enjoy and appreciate Roy Keane for what he is - the best value in a shiny bazaar filled with knock-offs and fake tat. If there is one player in the Premiership who offers 100 per cent every time he steps on to a pitch, it is Keane. It is odd that Keane's raging intensity still shocks and awes us. Ask Patrick Vieira. Ask Steven Gerrard. In recent weeks both have been taken by surprise and both have shrivelled in front of the furnace.
Last Tuesday night at Highbury was stuff for the career highlight reel. A long drumroll of hyped animosity between the hosts and their guests fed Keane's passion before he stepped in and seized the moment. Speaking to Sky Sports afterwards, he was still as pumped up as he had been when 'speaking' to Vieira beforehand. At 33, Keane remains one of the few players capable of taking a top-class fixture by the scruff of the neck and annexing all three points to his team. He remains the only player capable of dissolving solid matter with a single glare. There have been signs of his waning, but Keane has banished them before anybody plucked up the courage to ask him about them. His style has evolved in a way that suggests his intelligence has bought him a new lease on excellence. For Keane, this season will be divided into two segments interrupted by the bout of flu that kept him out of the first Arsenal game in October and, just as crucially, as it turned out, the limp defeat to Portsmouth in the next Premiership fixture.
Through late summer and through the gates of winter, Keane looked to be struggling. Since returning to the side he has whipped them and bullied them to the point where United's heroic pursuit of an implacable Chelsea side has become the most compulsive viewing in the Premiership. Keane's Lear-like rage, Ferguson's Punch 'n' Judy sensibility, Rooney's petulance. What drives him? In a word, home. The sense of loyalty, the desire not to let them down. He grew up in the heart of a close family in Mayfield, one of the tougher precincts in Cork, a town renowned for its second-city chippiness and its obsessive pursuit of sporting excellence. The environment of Cork, and specifically Mayfield, not only made Keane but informs his sense of himself to this day. If he felt that money and celebrity had altered him to the point where he was estranged from home he would know it was time to pack it in. He has always stayed true to the character who left a decade-and-a-half ago. When he arrived at Manchester United, flush with easy money (but less than he would have gained had he switched from Nottingham Forest to Blackburn), Keane bought and briefly drove a large red Mercedes with the personalised number plate Roy 1. Detecting that people were laughing at him, he soon replaced it with something more sober.
Keane is shy and enjoys reading. He takes a broadsheet in the morning and while other players, with United or Ireland, buzz around airport lounges on away trips he is invariably found sitting in a quiet corner getting through another chapter. Lest Keane come off as too cuddly, it's no harm to remember that he retains some kingsize flaws. A dislike of being portrayed as cuddly by journalists is one. Another is his obsession with privacy, which makes discussion of charitable work off limits, and manifests itself in a sharp distaste for the ostentatious charity of the celebrity world. In terms of temper he still has the ability to go from nought to 60 pretty quickly. Alan Shearer casually pushed the right button three seasons ago and found Keane's hands around his throat for the brief seconds it took the referee to end the deathly embrace with a red card. There is no let-up. Shyness and self-doubt and a mistrust of the glad-handing world around him are things that still torment him.
In Dublin this month the musical I, Keano opens. A parody on the most important event in the whole of Irish history, Keane's departure from Saipan, the show promises to be a cross between I, Claudius and South Pacific . There is no confirmation as to who, if anybody, will be singing 'I'm Going to Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair' , but we do know that the writers had originally thought to call the production McCarticus. Somehow, though, Keane just stood out as better box office. And, as the anti-hero turned hero, a better story too.