Sorry saga adapts new beginning

Soccer: Keane can offer his country some service still. His offer to do so should be greeted by watchful silence from his detractors, argues Tom Humphries

If relationships within the Irish team ever get back to the point whereby players sit around over their sasparillas and talk about the Good Old Days, Roy Keane may be surprised to note that he is the sole survivor of the infamous Harry's Challenge episode, that zenith of team preparation wherein Jack Charlton brought a rather hung-over squad of players to Harry Ramsden's on the Naas Road and had them eat mountains of greasy food on a competitive basis.

That was just nine years ago, before a crucial game with Austria, but the revolution at the heart of Irish football wasn't truly completed until yesterday when Keane opted to rejoin the Irish set-up, having found the approach and professionalism of Brian Kerr to be in harmony with his own ambitions.

That's no small step. We are a country which has thrived on getting by despite the odds and despite ourselves. We have always been loveably haphazard, more passionate than professional, more bonded than calculating.

We've enjoyed being underdogs, and in a way our relish for that role has been laced with cowardice. It's a long time since we decided to prepare like the best and measure ourselves against the best and go out onto the highwire without the safety net of our loveability and our songs and our charming fecklessness to break the fall.

By taking arms with Brian Kerr and, in a way, giving his imprimatur to the current set-up, Keane, of course, will open some old wounds. But his return should be warmly welcomed by all those with a genuine passion for the game in this country.

Great players are always an adornment, and there has seldom been a time when Irish football has so badly needed to have all its finest footballers available.

To watch Ireland in Basel last autumn play with such little heart or competitive edge forced one to lament Keane's absence more than the World Cup of the previous summer did. At the World Cup, the character of Staunton and Quinn and Gary Kelly prevented the Irish from looking like lost boys. When they went, we were callow.

Watching the emergence of talents like Liam Miller and Colin Healy and Seán Thornton and Andy Reid has made it impossible not to yearn for them to have a mentor figure anchoring midfield. Keane can offer his country some service still.

His offer to do so should be greeted at least by watchful silence from his detractors.

To think back on Saipan, with the benefit of perspective, was to wonder why we shouldn't aim to have the most meticulous preparations, why we shouldn't expect the best.

Have we finally allowed ourselves the maturity to compete without excuses, to take it as seriously as those teams who frequently beat us and then pat us on our passionate heads and tell us that we're great little fellas altogether?

By opting to return, Keane has made a difficult decision in several respects. There is no doubt that the easier option would have been to prolong his exile. That, after all, is a respectable Irish tradition in itself. As time has gone by Keane's absence from Irish squads has become less worthy of mention. He could have opted for the quiet life rather than re-inserting himself into the national argument.

His career is undoubtedly in its twilight and his powers and energy are slipping. Adding several international games a year to his diary increases the pressure to manage his schedule in such a way as to maximise the length of his career.

He will know, too, that in this country emotions still run high when his name is mentioned. There are those who believe passionately that Keane's refusal to participate in what he perceived as the farce of Irish World Cup preparations in 2002 was the act of a traitor. The corollary, that complicity would have been patriotic, is not an argument easily defeated by logic or reason.

Keane will hear some booing and receive some abuse. Nothing new there, and he will have noted that his old nemesis, Mick McCarthy, was subject to the same aural treatment before his departure. Nowt as queer as folk.

Keane's decision to return has been difficult in other respects, too. Looking in from the outside, one detects a gradual, perhaps subconscious, diminution in the level of respect the player has for Alex Ferguson. Yesterday, statements pointedly mentioned that Ferguson had taken part in the consultative process leading to Keane's return, but given the Scot's adamance over the situation as recently as 15 months ago, it seems unlikely that he would have changed his mind. Rather, he seems to carry less influence.

In that regard Ferguson has been depressingly inept in his handling of matters over the past 15 months or so. The episode wherein Keane failed to turn up in Kilmarnock for Kerr's first game as manager was badly handled by United, and their best player was made to look like no more than an asset whose presence was a comfort blanket for nervy shareholders. Back then Ferguson ruled with an iron rod. Manchester United covered their backside. Keane is too shrewd not to have noticed how that one played out.

This year the business of Rio Ferdinand and the Coolmore saga has seen Ferguson lose standing, while the constant whispers about United's transfer dealings have been less than edifying.

On the pitch, United have given Keane plenty to rail and howl about. Keane's not getting any younger. Ferguson is not getting any softer. One can only conclude that their relationship is changing.

But why come back to international football? Well, Keane's spiky sense of independence and canny feel for his own career will have told him several things. First, that he should finish his international career on his terms, not those of a club which will ultimately find him as dispensable as any other player.

Second, that the European Cup glory which he craves seems a little further away each year. The last chance to play on the grand stage might be Germany 2006.

Third, things are being done within the Irish camp in a manner which he appreciates. Keane has always responded to strong managers and the chance to learn from them.

He will have factored in the reaction of his erstwhile team-mates, too. On the record this is likely to be overwhelmingly positive, and even off-the-record misgivings are likely to be muted. That Keane is an asset to the international team is beyond question. That he has made the leap forward and offered to let the past be the past places the onus on others to do the same.

Anyway, who would object? Some of those players who gave off-the-record briefings after the Czech game to the effect that the preparations for matches were becoming a little too taxing for their brains? Diddums!

It is interesting to note that of the 23 players who gathered in the restaurant on that night in Saipan very few of the most influential are left. Several have departed voluntarily, including Niall Quinn, Alan Kelly, Steve Staunton, Gary Kelly, Dean Kiely and Lee Carsley. Others have seen their involvement or influence within the squad wane dramatically. Mark Kinsella, Steve Finnan, Dave Connolly and Steven Reid are peripheral figures now.

That leaves a disparate group of survivors. Damien Duff, Ian Harte, Clinton Morrison, Kenny Cunningham, Matt Holland, Robbie Keane, Richard Dunne, Andy O'Brien, Gary Breen, Kevin Kilbane, Jason McAteer and Shay Given.

Even that list contains the names of players struggling to keep international careers alive. To be brutal about it, only Duff, Keane and Given are indispensable in the medium to long-term, and each of those has sufficient ambition to recognise what Keane's return brings to the table.

(By the way, will it have escaped the notice of those who enjoy hurling the traitor epithet that while Keane makes himself available for the final years of a high-mileage career, several of his old colleagues from that room in Saipan have bowed out of international football - to prolong their club careers?)

In the time Keane has been away the moral authority within the side has shifted to younger players. The core of the team are from that golden generation who grew up winning things under Brian Kerr's tutelage. They will accept readily that the culture in which Jack Charlton nurtured his team has emphatically been abandoned. The teams with which Roy Keane will finish his international career should include players like Andy Reid, Liam Miller, John O'Shea, Seán Thornton, Colin Healy and possibly Stephen Kelly.

The thought of Keane playing for another couple of years and then passing the baton onto Miller or Healy is appealing and romantic. His influence could be more enduring than even he imagines.

There exists now of course the delicious possibility that Keane will be on the plane when Ireland depart for Poland later this week. Friendlies in Poland, especially one which took place in Bydgoszcz in May, 1981, were once seen by dedicated professionals as being as emblematic of the FAI's ineptitude as the Harry Ramsden Challenge.

The story runs that the Irish played Poland so frequently back then because a prominent FAI official had a mistress behind the Iron Curtain. The yarn is probably apocryphal, but Bydgoszcz 1981 and the 3-0 defeat of an Irish team containing O'Leary, Lawrenson, Bonner, Hughton, Moran and Stapleton is still seen as a low point.

Our return 23 years later could yet be seen as a new beginning.