The Irish team's exploits in its first two World Cup matches have finally forced the Roy v Mick saga off the front pages, despite the best efforts of Eamon Dunphy. But the team's togetherness has been won at the expense of the community of fans at home.
It had, briefly, the elements of a classic fable. A bitter severance between the hero and the team's father figure on the eve of battle generated stormy emotions among principals and public. Gloom, fury and disbelief took hold. Then, for a day, it looked like the standoff would be resolved by the hero's return to make peace and drive us on towards victory. We might all live happily ever after. The Roy Keane v Mick McCarthy spat was always faintly ludicrous, yet thoroughly captivating.
Like football itself, it simultaneously meant everything and nothing. When the story failed to produce a fairytale ending, it became embarrassing, almost unmentionable. Once upon a time, there had been Italy '90. It had been followed by USA '94.
In the public memory, these had been galas of communal fun, but the Keane v McCarthy row scuppered the chance of a repeat. This was dispiriting, especially as traditional community is already in steep decline in contemporary Ireland.
The price of affluence and an increasingly competitive "entrepreneurial" society has, unavoidably, been a dwindling of the old collective spirit, which is routinely dismissed as nostalgic, sentimental, even peasant-like, in this age of putative "individuality". Yet, when the opportunity for communal feeling, whether authentic or mawkish, arises, as it does during a World Cup, people understandably want to hold parties. Because of the rancour, however, despondent supporters cancelled their gatherings and barbecues.
(By the way, disc jockeys blabbering about "barbies" and "footie", as though the Australian suburbs had been grafted on to Dublin, were, in fact, culturally far more alarming than the row. "Footie" might be acceptable to describe seven-foot Aussies with blond perms, broken noses, corset-tight shorts and armpit-revealing shirts, fighting, lepping and belting a little rugby ball around a cricket field. But the World Cup is not a "footie fest". Perhaps it is for disc jockeys, early evening soap addicts and punters who have visited Oz, but for civilised people, it is not.)
Anyway, even the irritating "footie" folk wanted fun. Fair enough. The competition was meant to mark a period of sanctuary from the drudgery of workaday life and a joining-in the yearned-for communal spirit. Devoted football fans, of whom there are many in Ireland, could argue about team selection, tactical formations and individual players. But schoolchildren, overworked mothers and harassed workers - average Irish people, in fact - also dreamed of fun and they too had their dreams stomped on with studs when the row broke out.
That was the greatest insult in all of the bickering, but if it marks a de-leprechaun-ising of the Irish support, well . . . it's not before time. (We have had quite enough singing when we lose, thank you.)
Roy Keane, hauling in, through wages and sponsorship deals, more than €120,000 a week - roughly 300 times the national average wage - might not be willing to play for Mick McCarthy. But people seeking communal fun, even leprechaun-ised fun, expected him to play for Ireland . . . for them.
IT'S TRUE he couldn't have done the latter without doing the former, but, rightly or wrongly, people wanted and expected him to swallow some of his pride and put them first. When he made it clear that he was not prepared to do so, the embryonic fable splattered, like British reaction to the death of Diana Spencer, into embarrassment. We were forced to acknowledge that obstinacy, belligerence and selfishness are more a part of what we are than "footie", "barbies" or designer leprechauns.
Still, ultimately frivolous and all as the story was, it did have drama, and everybody had an opinion. On one level, it was simply about human conflict; on another, it was enmeshed with the passions of sport; on a third, it was a morality tale of our media age. As such, it was fable, burlesque and morality play. It was also, of course, none of those, because, ultimately, it was much ado about nothing. At its height, the row was referred to as a new and substitute Civil War.
But as soon as Keane's refusal to travel back to Japan ended negotiations, such absurd aggrandising had to be repressed to prevent millions feeling mortified. Eamon Dunphy - former footballer turned pundit; journalist (sportswriter, TV critic, polemicist); current-affairs radio presenter; TV gameshow host and sports presenter; biographer of U2, Matt Busby and Roy Keane; regular Questions and Answers guest; "hospitality" entertainer; and supreme self-publicist - grabbed more front-page news than he had, even in 1990.
Supporting Cameroon against Ireland and, despite the Irish team's commendable second-half revival, remaining begrudging towards McCarthy, Dunphy infuriated thousands. Clearly, his attitude contributed to increased public support for McCarthy.
Meanwhile, the 1-1 draws with Cameroon and Germany have maintained Irish interest and the "K question", although people still consider it alone and in small groups, has drifted off the public agenda.
Early in the week, Dunphy's aggression had marked a return to his more feral self - the one that savaged Jack Charlton, John Hume, Mary Robinson, Dick Spring, Proinsias De Rossa, Seamus Heaney, Pat Kenny, half of the media and many of Ireland's international football players. Lacking novelty, however, it seemed even more contrived than earlier high-profile spats. Nonetheless, yet again, the World Cup was providing a remarkable podium for Eamon Dunphy.
Of course, Charlie Haughey had won the Tour de France in 1987 and played in the World Cup quarter-final in 1990. His appearances in Paris and Rome are legendary. Yet, in terms of sheer publicity, Dunphy does even better from World Cups than Haughey ever did from sport. This time, much depends on whether or not Ireland qualifies for the last 16 on Tuesday. It's getting tougher on the pro-Keane side, but the spat may still take another turn.
WHATEVER turn it takes, the row remains certain to be recalled with embarrassment. It generated - understandably, if not commendably - so much media interest here that major stories - such as the risk of nuclear war between India and Pakistan, the perilous state of Aer Lingus and the formation of the Government - were, while not quite ignored, disproportionately downplayed. We all know that.
Perhaps Ireland would have done better with Roy Keane. On the other hand, the rest of the players might not have given as much as they did without being rallied by the row. Ironically, the sense of community forced on the Keane-less squad had to compensate for the sense of community denied the punters back home. So far, it has - and now the team, not the public, are the focus of attention.
Looks like this one may have been a coming-of-age fable in disguise. We'll see . . .