Irish soccerball nil - That boy Bazunu will save us (Part 1) 🐐

Sport
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Any hoops playing?

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Rovers, Pats and Bohs had one player each in the starting XI. Troy Parrott of Tottenham did this…

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Is Troy Irish or English?

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Sean McDermott Street I think .

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He’s Irish.

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Played for Belvo didn’t he?

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Nice by Parrott but he wouldn’t want to repeat it .

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Yes… he is a big unit .

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Yes

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Great to see Barry Coffey from Nenagh coming off the bench.

This is a seriously talented bunch

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FOOTBALL | GEORGE CAULKIN

Winner, aggressor, motivator, enigma – Roy Keane is a fire that burns like no other

George Caulkin speaks to those who know Ireland’s assistant coach best to work out why one of football’s most divisive figures still has a role to play

Keane has formed a successful double act at Ireland with O’Neill, who has no regrets about the appointment of his assistant

Keane has formed a successful double act at Ireland with O’Neill, who has no regrets about the appointment of his assistantMATTHEW ASHTON/GETTY IMAGES

The Times, October 12 2018, 5:00pm

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“I honestly don’t think anybody could have done what Roy did at Sunderland. He didn’t just lift the dressing room, he lifted the city. That’s the difference. When somebody comes in and lifts a city, it can be the petrol that fuels a club.” Niall Quinn.

First things first; Martin O’Neill harbours no regrets, not about the complex, driven individual he chose as his assistant five years ago. As pressure builds around Ireland — after two heavy competitive defeats, there is a demand for results which does not quite reflect the team’s limitations — much of the conversation centres on Roy Keane. It often does. The manager shuts it off. He feels “total vindication” about his decision.

Second things second; here we go again, felling more trees, coughing out newsprint, attempting to rationalise one of the most compelling and divisive sporting figures of his generation. The context this time? A treatment-room dispute between Keane and Harry Arter about fitness and commitment which led to the midfielder’s withdrawal from last month’s international fixtures.

Keane initially made a huge impact at Sunderland, but things soon turned sour
Keane initially made a huge impact at Sunderland, but things soon turned sour1370×913

Keane initially made a huge impact at Sunderland, but things soon turned sourOWEN HUMPHREYS/PA

Ireland’s resources are so meagre that any alienation is fraught with risk and although Arter has returned for tonight’s Nations League fixture against Denmark and Tuesday’s rematch with Wales, concerns gnaw away. Have we reached a point in the cycle where a warrior player who urged Manchester United to titles, this fire made flesh, has become more trouble than he is worth?

O’Neill pauses at that. “I’m glad you asked the question,” he says. “I’ve never felt it that way. Look, I actually think we’ve come a little way. You’re always learning in this business. Someone’s methods of getting the best out of people, it might not be suitable sometimes for a particular person, you know. It might not be. But the fact is that Roy and Harry have made up.

“And I’ve got to say, I would be disappointed if it put Roy into his shell. His time with the players — on the pitch when we train and around them afterwards — I wouldn’t change that for anything. You’re talking about a group of lads who had Roy as their poster-boy. Now they’re getting to see him up close.”

Keane and O’Neill have a good working relationship
Keane and O’Neill have a good working relationship1370×913

Keane and O’Neill have a good working relationshipKIERAN GAVIN/GETTY IMAGES

It is not always pretty, but neither is football. A leaked conversation between Stephen Ward, the Burnley full back, and his friends, alleged that Keane had said to Arter, “You’re f****** prick, you’re a c***, you don’t even care, you don’t wanna train.” On these pages, it prompted a blunt headline: ‘Few people have been less suited to coaching than this vile bully Roy Keane’.

Yet light dapples the shade and Keane is three-dimensional. Before Ireland played Italy in the European Championship finals, a victory which took them into the knockout phase, O’Neill delivered the team-talk while Keane “was more personal,” Shay Given says, having “a word here and there, reminding people of their responsibilities and their jobs. There was no chest-beating or pulling doors off hinges.”

Rewind, reboot, recalibrate. It was late August 2006 and, in Quinn’s words, Sunderland were “broken”, relegated from the Premier League with 15 points and now, after four league games and four defeats, bottom of the Championship. Quinn, who had played for Sunderland, fronted an Irish consortium which had bought the club. He was chairman and, temporarily, the manager.

Enter Keane. He and Quinn had been team-mates for Ireland, pushed apart after that extraordinary episode in Saipan when Keane left Ireland’s 2002 World Cup squad. Theirs was a convoluted relationship but the partnership thrived, Quinn promising enraptured supporters a “magic carpet ride.” Six new players arrived on transfer deadline day. Uplift followed.

“We had media requests to attend Roy’s press conferences from China, Japan, Hong Kong,” Quinn says. “What Championship club would get that? That’s the reach he has, what he can bring. He just has this unbelievable presence.

“When he first came to Sunderland, we were still trying to sell 27 executive boxes. We organised a function for North East business people. Roy walked into the room and it fell silent. He worked that room and didn’t hold back. We sold out in an hour and a half. He got in his car, went home. I could tell 100 stories like that. The guy has a phenomenal power.”

Quinn described Keane as having an “unbelievable presence”
Quinn described Keane as having an “unbelievable presence”1370×913

Quinn described Keane as having an “unbelievable presence”AP

With gelignite beneath them, Sunderland soared as champions. “To not know the league, to learn, to grab it and get promotion from a relentless division, I’m telling you, that’s a great effort,” O’Neill says. “Roy took it in his stride,” Quinn says. “He put Sunderland on the map.”

David Connolly was top scorer that season. “Roy made it like a mini Manchester United,” he says. “The place was buzzing, it was a wave of excitement. Everyone bought into it. It was a massive coup; a world class player, his first role in management, not too dissimilar to Steven Gerrard at Rangers. He harnessed the energy of the club.”

Keane’s standards were exacting. “Roy would oversee training,” Connolly says. “He would select the team and discuss tactics with his coaches, but they led the sessions. We spoke to people who were at United and it was similar; high-tempo, very competitive. Roy didn’t suffer fools and it didn’t matter who you were or what you’d done. You had to perform.”

Were there personal relationships with players? “There was a feeling that if you had to talk to him too often he would probably think you were high maintenance,” Connolly says. How about empathy? “He didn’t have too much time for injured players, but that’s fair enough. You were expected to play with niggles and that’s fine, too.

“When my daughter was born, we were playing at home the following day and I was in the team hotel. It got to 10pm and I said to Roy, ‘My wife’s giving birth,’ and he said, ‘OK, see you in the morning.’ So I got my wife, drove to the hospital and was back at the hotel for breakfast at 8am. That was how you were expected to be. Again, fine with me, but not everybody would want to work that way.”

Sunderland finished 15th in their first season back in the Premier League, but the experience was wearing. In November 2007, they were beaten 7-1 at Everton. “I hardly left the bed for 48 hours,” Keane wrote in his autobiography. “You’re advised to move on quickly, but I couldn’t. I don’t think I showered for two or three days.” He lacerates himself more than anybody. Anger is “part of my personality,” he says and so, too, “the self-destruct button.”

“We all lack something,” Connolly says, “and, I don’t know, maybe the strengths you have as a player and person can also be a weakness. That hunger, that desire, that will to win burns brighter in some than in others and that daily necessity to be striving is something Roy has in abundance. When you’re winning, it’s great. He has a great sense of humour and can be brilliant company.

“When it’s not going so well, it becomes trickier. Coping mechanisms and strategies aren’t things you learn on courses. You’re worrying about the whole club and your mood can infiltrate the whole club. I guess that’s where it became hardest for Roy.”

Sunderland ended in sourness, but the club stayed up for a decade. “I wanted to leave my mark,” Keane said, “I don’t think I quite did.” Many would disagree; it was explosive, special. Quinn says: “I remember saying to Roy once, ‘Hey, we’ve got to be a bit more certain about the players we buy’ and Roy went, ‘Back me and eventually we’ll have 11 like me.’ ” The thought is terrifying and tantalising.

Keane has fallen out with several members of the Ireland squad during his time as assistant manager
Keane has fallen out with several members of the Ireland squad during his time as assistant manager1370×913

Keane has fallen out with several members of the Ireland squad during his time as assistant managerRYAN BYRNE/REX FEATURES

Ipswich Town, Keane’s next posting, was wrong from the start. His “biggest failing,” was recruitment, he said, but he “managed badly.” If he lived it again, he “would try and enjoy it a bit more. I’d try and be myself a bit more.” And: “I felt like an actor sometimes.”

Why Keane, 47, has to be “Roy Keane” is another conundrum, although his eagerness to learn under O’Neill and Paul Lambert at Aston Villa, hardly screams of ego. “Their contrasting personalities worked really well,” Given says of Ireland. “Martin is very calm and analytical with a quiet authority, while Roy can have a bit of a temper and give you a rollicking.” Given calls it an “effective combination.”

It felt right to O’Neill and still does. He had enjoyed punditry duties alongside Keane for ITV and there was shared history: Nottingham Forest, Brian Clough, Celtic. “He was a strong-minded fellow, with a pretty strong opinion,” O’Neill says. “I believe Roy has unfinished business in management, but I also thought he might enjoy this role, working for a manager who was a generation older, someone he had some respect for.

“I liked what he could bring to the Irish side of things. I knew about Saipan and the divide, but Roy was an iconic figure, too, and as much as I believe I get players playing for me, the lovely side is that he would be dealing with players who idolised him. It turned out pretty well for us. We made it through to France, a brilliant experience. I felt total vindication for him coming on board.

Keane worked under Lambert at Villa before assisting O’Neill with Ireland
Keane worked under Lambert at Villa before assisting O’Neill with Ireland1370×913

Keane worked under Lambert at Villa before assisting O’Neill with IrelandTONY O’BRIEN/ACTION IMAGES

“Roy is fiery, there’s no question about that, but let’s be fair. He had some great players alongside him at Manchester United, but he was the driving force and his team-mates were just as concerned about pleasing him as they were about pleasing Sir Alex Ferguson. I wouldn’t want to diminish that. I’d want to enhance it. So I know at times there can be a bit of friction and arguments, but that’s up to me to manage. I wouldn’t change it; not at all.”

Perhaps the other side of Keane, that yearning for perfection which mutates into imperfection, emerged following the World Cup qualifying play-off defeats to Denmark. Perhaps tension and scrutiny were all inflamed by that sapping 4-1 loss in Wales last month, but if Keane should sometimes retreat for a step or two, so should we. Sunderland was extraordinary. Ireland have over-achieved.

At his introductory press conference in 2013, Keane discussed his image. “I’m not some sort of animal,” he said. He was looking forward to working more closely with players. Like a friendly uncle? “I could be, yes,” he said. “If things go well. If we are winning.” And if not? “Jesus. Listen, you all have an uncle you don’t really like, don’t you?” Everybody laughed. Ireland need a win, but nobody craves it more than their assistant manager.

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Christie at left wing back could be hilarious

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John Walters verified the WhatsApp here as a pundit on sky

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The Under 19s have beaten the Dutch. The Delaney/Dokter vision coming to fruition.

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Relegated from a made up competition :grimacing:
Will Eire be competing in the repechage next year?

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I don’t believe their demotion is confirmed. I think they can avoid relegation if they beat Austria by better than 1-0 and the Austrians fail to get something from Bosnia.

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Relegated from playing friendlies

Ground football is on its uppers

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I’d have thought a rugby man would understand just how damn important friendlies are. These were full test matches with caps awarded and ranking points available.

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No these are definitely plain old friendlies

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John has a long term plan, no need to panic