Imaginary Triggs? Wtf
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Only back in civilisation today so will post as soon as WiFi allows
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Complete self serving cunt
He’ll post when he’s back on WiFi. Cut him some slack.
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He knows that lads are eagerly awaiting the next instalment. He’s just toying with us
He was.
Fifty-eight years before Roy Keane called Mick McCarthy a ‘c***,’ and a ‘w***er,’ the Battle of Saipan claimed the lives of 50,000 soldiers and civilians, including thousands of mass suicides sparked by Japanese misinformation about the barbarity of the invading Americans.
Or so we’ve been told by the victors, who tend to write history.
This is an oral account of a phoney war, where nobody died and everybody lost, with the factual record diverging over the past two decades depending on each person’s perspective.
“We had a lovely day yesterday, we went up to Suicide Cliff and learned the history,” Roy Keane told The Irish Times on May 23rd, 2002. “I enjoyed that, that’s the nice side of it, but I keep saying to everybody we’re here to prepare for the World Cup.
“I was going to go back up there today to that cliff!” Keane laughed. “Add an Irishman to the list.”
Saipan – the actors
Mick McCarthy – Republic of Ireland manager
Roy Keane – Republic of Ireland captain
Malachy Logan – Irish Times sports editor
Paul Howard – Author of ‘The Gaffers’ and ‘Triggs’
Bertie Ahern – An Taoiseach
Johnny Fallon – Republic of Ireland kitman
Tommie Gorman – RTÉ news and current affairs
Liam Gaskin – McCarthy’s agent and friend
Jason McAteer – Right midfield (interview via LV Bet)
Kevin Kilbane – Left midfield
Chiedozie Ogbene – Age 5
Jason McAteer: The 1994 World Cup was the best experience of my life. It was just amazing. Everything about it was brilliant.
Kevin Kilbane: Off we went to a little town in the middle of nowhere. Izumo. Crop fields everywhere. You could imagine how Japan used to be. But the facilities were top class.
Paul Howard: I remember going to the first training session in Japan. It was indoors. There was a Nike ad at the time that said ‘losers go home’ and at the end of the session McCarthy shouted ‘losers go home’ and everyone took it as a pointed attack at Roy Keane. And then he announced that he wouldn’t be talking about Roy Keane anymore.
Johnny Fallon: The atmosphere was really difficult. Media lads were all outside the hotel. Strange phone calls were coming from home. Bertie was getting involved. And Roy was coming back. We had a meeting and Mick asked the players what they wanted to do.
Mick McCarthy (to squad): “You can do one of three things. You can back me, you can do nothing at all or you can support Roy.”
Kevin Kilbane: We knew we were a better team with Roy. We also knew, having been in that meeting, that it would be really difficult for Mick to pick Roy.
Paul Howard: That whole week before Cameroon the story was changing by the hour – will he or won’t he come back? It became the first story where the internet had taken over from newspapers.
Liam Gaskin: I had Mick’s contract signed. It was in my bag. I went to Mick to sign it two or three months before we went. Mick said I will sign it but ‘I don’t want you to give it back to them because I want you to negotiate bonuses for the backroom staff.’ When I got out there Mick said ‘Hold onto it’ because if this goes badly ‘I’ll walk away, I won’t want another two years.’
Spain goalkeeper Iker Casillas saves Kevin Kilbane’s penalty during the shoot-out in the 2002 World Cup Round of 16 match in Suwon. Photograph: Petar Kujundzic/Reuters
Spain goalkeeper Iker Casillas saves Kevin Kilbane’s penalty during the shoot-out in the 2002 World Cup Round of 16 match in Suwon. Photograph: Petar Kujundzic/Reuters
Paul Howard: It was the only World Cup I covered and I didn’t enjoy any of it. I was only at six matches because we had press conferences the whole time. The Roy Keane stuff made it hard to concentrate on the football. Even the happiness of Ireland reaching the last 16, you were kind of faking it because you knew Ireland’s best player wasn’t there. He was the other side of the world walking a Labrador.
Jason McAteer: I went there as a senior pro, and had to deal with all the stuff off the pitch as well. I was heavily involved in that. I’d to do more interviews and be accountable for what had happened. It soured the experience.
Kevin Kilbane: Even now, living in Canada, not a week goes by when someone doesn’t ask me about Roy Keane, Saipan and eventually the penalty shoot-out.
Liam Gaskin: Before the Spanish game Mick said to me ‘You know this World Cup is going to be remembered for my spat with Roy Keane and Roy going home? Not for the next 50 years, it will be talked about in 150 years.’ I thought he was exaggerating but he is right and I don’t get it.
Jason McAteer: “Now I am more aware of what goes on mentally I can probably understand why he went home, why it was too much for him.” Photograph: Andrew Paton/Inpho
Jason McAteer: “Now I am more aware of what goes on mentally I can probably understand why he went home, why it was too much for him.” Photograph: Andrew Paton/Inpho
Part VI - Sliding Doors
Roy Keane (September 2002): “I couldn’t go on. I’m sure Mick would say the same. It just wasn’t happening for us. We tried. He tried as hard as me. And I did try.”
Kevin Kilbane: When someone is calling the manager a ‘c***’ in front of his players there is not much wiggle room! But that streak in Roy to say ‘no, f*** you,’ that’s what made him the best in the world.
Johnny Fallon: Twenty years later, like leave football out of it, you are able to talk to the ex-taoiseach about it. It was such a seismic thing. We were in Saipan so we missed it.
Bertie Ahern: We would have beaten Spain. I know it is funny to say now but they weren’t a great team.
Kevin Kilbane: We would have made the semi-final, easily, and probably the final. I feel we would have beat Germany. Luis Enrique, in midfield for Spain, would have felt differently playing against Roy. Because we felt differently. We felt it against Portugal, we felt it against Holland. He would have dominated midfield against Germany and Spain. In every big match around that time I felt we were going to win. We had two players, in Robbie and Damien, who became two of the best we’ve ever produced. We may not have beaten Brazil but we would have given them a game.
Paul Howard: Looking at what happened at United with Ferguson a few years later, it was almost an exit strategy for Roy Keane.
Liam Gaskin: I think he was just an unhappy guy and it overcame him. I know families fell out over it. I had no ideas these things could happen. I am a Leinster fan since I was 12 and friends of mine are Munster fans – I fucking hate them – but we don’t fall out over it. So I never really got families being divided by it.
Jason McAteer: I was there, I lived it. I think, because we had such a good tournament, that it still rankles with people that Roy went home. There are unanswered questions: Why didn’t you get him back? Why didn’t he come back? There are still a million reasons why it happened and I don’t think anyone will ever get to the bottom of it.
Paul Howard: At the time, like a lot of people, I thought it was a 50-50 issue. Two men who couldn’t agree over their places in the hierarchy just found it too difficult not to have a row. Years and years of bitterness and resentment just came out. But Keane has fallen out with everyone he has worked with since then and Mick McCarthy has proved himself to be a very good manager and the most eminently decent human being as well.
Liam Gaskin: When Wolves were playing Sunderland [in 2006] I said: ‘This is going to be the biggest scrum in history, trying to get a photo of that handshake’ and Mick said, ‘No, I’ve contacted Roy and we are meeting for a cup of tea.’ Really? ‘Yeah, we need to put this thing behind us as the only people benefiting are the media, so we’ll finish it.’ They had a cup of tea and both exchanged views about how neither of them was wrong, but it was cordial. About three months later Roy was doing a TV programme and he ate the bollicks off Mick again.
Jason McAteer: Roy has his own reasons, he keeps them to himself, as far as I am aware. He’s not quite as open as everybody else. So we can’t speak for him. Now I am more aware of what goes on mentally I can probably understand why he went home, why it was too much for him. Do I wish it was different? I do. But Roy is a very impulsive character. He believes in what he says. He does what he wants. But listen, he chose to go home. He wasn’t sent home. We didn’t want him to go home and he made that decision and he has to live with that.
Tommie Gorman: The way Keane performed as a player, he has never been able and never will be able to transfer that into management skills. Because it’s entirely instinctive, it’s in the genes and I don’t think you can pass on that magic. It’s like the Bradán Feasa.
Bertie Ahern: I thought about what I would have said to them, many times. I would have been pitching it on: ‘Listen, you are two professional guys. Both of you have served the country really well, but this is for the people back home. This is for the kids. This is for the football supporters. This is for the people of the country who need something in their lives to lift them. You guys can do that. You don’t have to love each other but in the name of the country, put all this aside.’ I would have appealed to their national inclination. You have to leave the argument at the door and get into the discussion: ‘The country needs both of you. Don’t let a good football team be lost over personal disagreements.’
Paul Howard: The only pity was they couldn’t put it off for a few more weeks. Then again, it is hard to share joy with somebody you don’t like.
Tommie Gorman: A bit like the Battle of Kinsale or the Armada being blown off course, it will always be a case of, ‘What might have been?’ There is no total villain in the piece. There was a haphazard level of professionalism by the FAI, which grew and then crashed and burned.
John Delaney (The Irish Times 2012): “I looked upon it as a watershed moment for us . . . Sometimes you’ve got to hit the bottom of the barrel.”
Paul Howard: After the World Cup, when they were destroyed in Russia, the players looked like they had PTSD. Shell-shocked. Exhausted. And then the books came out. Then McAteer was in Keane’s ear when they played against each other and Keane eventually cuffed him and got sent off. There was all these afters. They played Switzerland at home and the crowd was chanting ‘Keano, Keano, Keano’ which let McCarthy know ‘We all enjoyed the World Cup but we think you were wrong.’
Jason McAteer: People have this perception that me and Roy despise each other. I can’t speak for him, I can only speak for me; I got no problem with Roy. I have bumped into him and it hasn’t gone according to my plan.
Chiedozie Ogbene: I am going to be honest, [Saipan] doesn’t mean anything to me. I do know Roy Keane from being a Manchester United fan, we used to watch him a lot. It’s crazy when you hear that kind of story and what the team did. We just hope to imitate that, to take Ireland back to that position.
Jason McAteer: Saipan, and the 2002 World Cup, just leaves a tinge of sadness. I am not angry with Roy, I am not disgusted with him, I am just sad he wasn’t there to prove to the world that he actually was the best centre midfielder of that time. Because he was.
Epilogue
June 16th, 2002 World Cup, round of 16 - Spain 1-1 Ireland (AET, Spain win 3-2 on pens)
“I came out later that afternoon to walk the dog and it was amazing, the street was dead. No story any more. It was like that scene from The General when Martin Cahill comes out on the morning he was shot and there’s absolutely nobody there. I’m looking around wondering if there’s somebody in the bushes, waiting for me.”
Roy Keane, September 2002
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A bit like the Tipperary thread.
you bad bastard
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Saipan 20 years on - Part IV: Ireland loses the run of itself as Roy goes walking the dog
Subscriber only
The many attempts to get the Ireland captain back to Japan were doomed for all sorts of reasons
Sun, May 8, 2022, 06:00
A big screen in The Temple Bar Sports Bar shows Roy Keane’s interview with Tommie Gorman on the RTÉ News. Photograph: Tom Honan/Inpho
Fifty-eight years before Roy Keane called Mick McCarthy a ‘c**,’ and a ‘w**er,’ the Battle of Saipan claimed the lives of 50,000 soldiers and civilians, including thousands of mass suicides sparked by Japanese misinformation about the barbarity of the invading Americans.
Or so we’ve been told by the victors, who tend to write history.
This is an oral account of a phoney war, where nobody died and everybody lost, with the factual record diverging over the past two decades depending on each person’s perspective.
“We had a lovely day yesterday, we went up to Suicide Cliff and learned the history,” Roy Keane told The Irish Times on May 23rd, 2002. “I enjoyed that, that’s the nice side of it, but I keep saying to everybody we’re here to prepare for the World Cup.
“I was going to go back up there today to that cliff!” Keane laughed. “Add an Irishman to the list.”
Saipan – the actors
Mick McCarthy – Republic of Ireland manager
Roy Keane – Republic of Ireland captain
Malachy Logan – Irish Times sports editor
Paul Howard – Author of ‘The Gaffers’ and ‘Triggs’
Bertie Ahern – An Taoiseach
Johnny Fallon – Republic of Ireland kitman
Tommie Gorman – RTÉ news and current affairs
Liam Gaskin – McCarthy’s agent and friend
Jason McAteer – Right midfield (interview via LV Bet)
Kevin Kilbane – Left midfield
Chiedozie Ogbene – Age 5
Roy Keane : “Cowards.”
At 7.30pm that same evening, McCarthy, FAI president Milo Corcoran and Brendan McKenna held a press conference in the Chinese restaurant off the Hyatt hotel lobby, which was also attended by new Ireland captain Steve Staunton, Niall Quinn and Alan Kelly.
Liam Gaskin : I would have let the whole thing settle down and I would have dissected it with Mick in absolute detail. Scrutinise every element of it so we knew what we were going to say and why we were going to say it. The FAI fucked it up completely.
Bertie Ahern : There’s always harsh words. I have been in rooms where people have said the most terrible things to each other and then the following morning we have to sit down and continue the discussion. In the heat of an argument people forget what the purpose is. I did [trade] union discussions for years, political discussions, Northern Ireland peace talks. When people forget what the argument is, it gets personal and animosity builds up. Unfortunately, I never got to mediate and neither did anyone else, which is the sad thing about it all.
Paul Howard : It really was one of those times where Ireland lost the run of itself. We thought we were going out there to write about football, and there we were ringing our contacts in Fianna Fáil back home to see if Bertie was getting involved to get Roy back to Japan.
Bertie Ahern : There was a period of about 48 hours where it seemed it might have been possible to try and arbitrate something and calm it down. We were trying to get an arrangement where I would talk to both Mick and Roy, as a soccer supporter, not as Taoiseach, to see if we could mediate. I said I would, if Roy agreed, but by the time the plan was cooked up the second confrontation happened and Roy was in the airport. I remember talking to [FAI chief executive] Brendan Menton and others at the time and there was this basic misunderstanding.
Paul Howard : Brendan Menton was struck dumb by the whole thing. When he got out there he was on the wrong side of the world to deal with it because Roy was back in Manchester.
Alan Kelly, Niall Quinn, manager Mick McCarthy, FAI general secretary Brendan Menton and Steve Staunton at a press conference in Saipan on May 23rd to announce that Roy Keane was leaving the World Cup squad, 2002. Photograph: Andrew Paton/Inpho
Liam Gaskin : I asked Mick, ‘If he comes back, will you have him?’ and what he actually said was ‘As long as he apologies to the players, the staff and me, of course we’d have him back.’ And he asked me what I think and I said, ‘There is no fucking chance he is coming back.’ I was watching people trying to make contact with him, talk to him, talk around him.
Paul Howard : What completely undermined Mick was what was happening in the background to get Roy Keane back. If there was a question about Keane and McCarthy and who actually got Ireland to the World Cup, McCarthy was getting his answer from the FAI.
Liam Gaskin : I’ll tell you this, and this is an absolute fact, on the flight out to Tokyo I met [a player’s mother] on the plane. I knew her from before, and I asked her what she thought of all the shemozzle and she said, ‘Oh I am delighted.’ I looked at her and said, ‘Why do you say that?’ She said, ‘All the young players are afraid of him.’
Tommie Gorman : If only Des Casey had had a role for the FAI. His work as the Rights Commissioner would have made him very useful but manning the fort back in Dublin was a young man named John Delaney.
Paul Howard : This created John Delaney. He was so young and he went on Prime Time with Dunphy and handled it really well.
Prime Time – Thursday, May 23rd, 2002
Eamon Dunphy : Freddie Ljungberg today lunged at and punched another Swede on the training ground. No one is going to send Freddie Ljungberg home. Raúl, the great Spanish centre forward, is fighting with the Spanish manager, no one is going to send Raúl home. It is only the Irish who will send the greatest player, probably in the world at this time, home and cheat the fans and cheat the nation of the opportunity of enjoying something we have worked hard for, for four years. Now, I know you are a good guy John, you are one of the reformers in Merrion Square, but who is running Irish soccer, the FAI or Mick McCarthy?
John Delaney : Eamon, you know as well as I do, I am treasurer of the association, I am responsible for the financial part of the association. Mick McCarthy is our team manager. I will never cross the line in terms of picking a team. I think Alan Kelly made a very salient point today: ‘What’s the difference between one player going home and 22 players going home?’ There is a problem with team morale out there.
- Saipan 20 years on - Part III: The interview, the meeting, the row, the departure
- Saipan 20 years on: The inside story of the World Cup row that divided a nation
Mark Little : Is there no chance that Roy Keane will go with the team to Japan?
John Delaney : I can’t see any way. If you could wave a magic wand we’d all be delighted to do so, but I think it has just gone a bridge too far.
Liam Gaskin : I always thought John Delaney was a decent enough skin because he was very good to Mick, he kind of understood the manager was the manager, ‘whatever resources we can give we will give him and hopefully he will do the best job for us’. And Mick had a decent relationship with him. Some of us who did business with the FAI may have had a sense what was going on but Mick was gobsmacked when he heard. He literally couldn’t believe it.
Tommie and Roy interview – May 27th, 2002
Tommie Gorman : I went over to Manchester with a cameraman called Conor O’Brien from Belfast, and tried to make contact with people. I discovered pretty quickly that Michael Kennedy was Roy’s agent. This began a lifelong friendship. He was a sweetheart of a human being. Gorgeous man from the Cork-Kerry border or Kerry-Cork, depending on where one’s loyalties lie. He was just pure silk.
Michael Kennedy, who passed away in 2020 age 76, was a London-born solicitor, with parents from the Dingle peninsula, who acted as an agent for several Irish footballers, including Keane and Quinn. Roy Keane once said he would trust Kennedy “with his life”.
Tommie Gorman : We got to Keane’s house in Hale, a fancy area outside Manchester, like Dalkey. He arrived anyway, the excitement was like the arrival of the high king, and you could see the kids in the upstairs window waiting for Daddy to come home. A while later Keane marches out with Triggs. It was like the rumble in the jungle. Muhammad Ali stepping into the ring. Jaysus, fellas running after him and a girl throwing questions.
‘Any regrets Roy?’
‘Are you happy to be home?’
‘Do you have a message for Mick and the lads?’
‘What’s the dog called, Roy?’
Tommie Gorman : Keane had the baseball hat and Triggs beside him, it was such a defiant statement. Off they went into the woods.
Triggs : “Down Bankhall Lane we strode, until we reached our little stile. Roy went over it, I went under it and, for reasons I can’t explain, the crowd chose not to follow us down the narrow, muddy path that led to the Bollin.
“I tried to keep the conversation light. ‘Stick your World Cup up your bollocks?’”
Imaginary Roy : I meant to say, ‘Stick your World Cup up your arse, you bollicks’ but, well, I was on a bit of a roll!
Triggs : “It seemed to me that his anger with Mick had dissipated . . . and seemed to be directed at Niall Quinn and Steve Staunton, who’d sat alongside Mick at his press conference looking obligingly traumatisied.”
Imaginary Roy : Sitting there like two innocent children – ‘never hear the likes of it.’ Open your ears next time you’re taking a fucking corner kick.
Paul Howard : I remember watching those walks on Sky News from my laptop in Japan. I just thought it was so bizarre – Ireland’s greatest footballer walking down the road with a dog as the press pack shouts ‘what’s his name, Roy?’ I just started to imagine conversations between Roy and the dog and thought she would understand the whole nature of hierarchy.
Tommie Gorman : I heard Roy was doing a piece for the Mail on Sunday, giving his side of the story. Often these things would be paid, so I made the case to Kennedy that The Mail won’t reach an Irish audience. We are fair dealers. Martin Bashir had also been on. The deal was it would go out as recorded.
“If I felt for one second, for one second, I was a little bit out of order I would apologise and go back. I’d love to play in the World Cup. Not one person backed me up, not one.”
“What happened to me last week will live with me for a long time but I tell my kids what is right and what is wrong and what happened to me is wrong so the ball is in other people’s court.”
Tommie Gorman : I thought he had done enough to leave the door open. I think he thought that too. I know Keane stayed up to see what the reaction was like.
Liam Gaskin : I waited to fly out to watch the programme with Tommie Gorman. After, I rang Mick, it was about 6am down there, and I said, ‘Yer man is a fucking lunatic. Well, that’s my impression.’ Tommie asked him, everybody has asked him, he is not going to go back. Mick said, ‘Do you really think so?’ and I said, ‘I am telling you, he ain’t going back.’ He just said, ‘Aw fair enough.’ I was being flippant when I said he was a lunatic but I was watching this programme thinking the whole world wants you to do something and you are saying no, no, no . . . He was saying no to everybody.
Paul Howard : I didn’t buy Niall Quinn’s account. Nor did I buy that he was the man that was going to solve this. His classic thing to say is, ‘If I could have turned back the clock I should have done this, I could have done that.’ Niall Quinn shouting ‘stop!’ in the room would not have stopped Mick and Roy moving into the closing scene of the movie. They were heading towards the plot resolve and nothing, absolutely nothing, was going to change that.
Liam Gaskin : By the time I arrived in Tokyo, Roy Keane had issued a statement saying he wasn’t going back.
Paul Howard : A lot of managers would have walked. Mick’s innate decency and professionalism is what kept him there because he was really badly undermined. The ham-fisted way that the statement was handled as well.
Emmet Malone : That was the incredible day of the Brendan McKenna press conference [10am], the player statement [10.30am], the Niall Quinn explanation of the player statement [5pm], the Mick McCarthy and Brendan Menton press conference [8pm]. Doors were being closed, it seemed, then reopened and we made what sense of it we could after getting back to the hotel that evening and happily heading to bed in the early hours.
Paul Howard : A complete and utter shambles.
Emmet Malone : Not too long after, the phone rang in my room. It was Declan Murray back in the office.
“Sorry, Emmet, but there’s been a development. Roy has issued a statement. He’s not coming back.”
“What time is it?” I asked, completely disoriented.
“Four o’clock.”
“Morning or afternoon?”
“Morning.”
“Here or there?”
“There.”
“Fuck . . . okay.”
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I lolled at this bit 
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John was a gas cunt all the same!
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I just know this clip drives a few posters who think they know the game of football absolutely mental.
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You might have misjudged the narrative here bud - the chap who’s over hugging Keane (I don’t know who he is) is fawning over him because as soon as he makes a cock-up Keane will lacerate him on the box.
Newbie decides to build up some credit, in the manner the Ronaldo snake did, by sliding over and trying to get on the traitors good side.
The whole thing is a giant cod - trust me.
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His agent had him well briefed.
Keane was on the Gary Neville soccer box thing last night. Doing his usual schtick of playing every achievement down and also giving Sralex absolutely no credit whatsoever for any of the success. He hardly spoke a word to Roy in their 12 years together apparently