ROY KEANE INTERVIEW:TOM HUMPHRIES meets a more stress-free Roy Keane at his annual state of the nation address

HE GOT into Dublin on Wednesday night. Watched Barca and Inter on a bar room screen. Mourinho! Then he had an early night. Sipping the last cup of tea from a long day, he thought passingly of nights spent in Dublin when he was younger. Skid marks all over the city. Smoke plumes in the morning. And he thought of Mourinho cavorting on some foreign field. Number one. All part of a journey. The country behind. The country that any young manager hopes is ahead.

On Thursday he performed his annual gig for the guide dog people. He enjoys it, he says, with a pointed lack of piety. And it is enjoyable. The fascination with him never really wanes. Every year word spreads quietly through the ranks of all concerned with the day as to what sort of form HE is in. Not that he has ever gone all Hannibal Lecter and consumed a guide dog puppy between two slices of bread. No, more that these visits – the media segment of which is jokingly known as Roy Keane’s state of the nation address – are a good chance to read where Roy Keane’s head is at. And love him or loathe him, that’s always interesting.

By Thursday evening he was gone again, leaving behind a trail of quotes and thoughts like breadcrumbs in a fairytale.

So what sort of form is he in? It was unanimous he looked more stress-free and content than ever before, the worries of the world lifted from his shoulders, at least temporarily. He is too driven a man to keep his bonnet entirely free of bees for a sustained period but for now he is content.

Which isn’t bad for a man who spent the first third of the season on death row with the media counting down the days to when Ipswich’s reclusive owner Marcus Evans would strap Roy Keane into an electric chair.

They started with a loss and a draw and that stretched itself into a run of 14 games without a win, his Friday press conferences becoming an exercise in defiance as they came with picks and shovels to bury him. Finally, on Halloween, something broke.

“I’ll be the better manager for it,” he says with a grin. “Against Derby a back popped up in the box with a header. Derby took a chance that day, they played well against us, and we just got the break.

“This year’s experience will stand me in good stead. More so than at Sunderland. I’ve learned. I go back to the first day of season. Coventry. Any team that goes up from the Championship, and it’s 30 in 10 years, you need four points out of your first two games. Burnley did it when they went up and we did it at Sunderland when I was there but generally speaking that’s the rule. We had a draw from the first two games.”

A season of 20 draws, giving away leads. Where do the points go, where are the cracks in the floor. Sheffield United? Handed them two points wrapped in a 92nd-minute goal. Watford? 94th minute. There you go. WBA, 93 minutes? You’re welcome. Doncaster, 83 minutes? Hello? Are you going to say thank you? Level with Barnsley until the sixth minute of injury-time. Who loses in the 96th minute? He gave 19 debuts. Used five first-team goalkeepers, including a guy who lived up the road and came in to keep in shape. His top goalscorer wouldn’t reach double figures.

“People ask about Ipswich this year and the only word that comes to mind is frustration. Poor start we had this year. Twenty draws is ridiculous. Not good draws. You go through the stats. We had more possession, more shots etc, I won’t bore you. The amount of injury-time draws killed us.”

You wait for the who to bless and who to blame stuff. It’s not in him today, though.

“I enjoyed it, though. We are sprinting harder, we are covering more miles. We are lacking some experience and a little quality but the players have been brilliant. Brilliant. The owner was very good. Fans were decent. They are decent people. They give you the benefit of the doubt.

“At the start, through all that frustration, I was quite calm. I had to be because I knew the players were giving me everything. And I learned a lot from that. What exactly did I learn? I’m not sure yet because you don’t know for a while. At the start of the season I did have a go at a few players but it wasn’t bollockings they needed, it was a case of keep it going. It will happen.”

He and his wife Therese and the kids lived in a rented house at a seaside resort for the year. They are moving into a place of their own in three weeks, another compression of the time available in close season.

“People call it sleepy Suffolk, but it is very quiet and relaxed. When we aren’t winning and you are out and about, people would never be in your face about it. We have a great quality of life. If people come up to us where we live they will say ‘Stick at it, Roy’, or something like that, in a nice way. No aggression.

“Sometimes perhaps a club needs that edge but people are generally nice and decent in Ipswich. They are loyal. I think it goes back to previous managers, Bobby Robson or Alf Ramsey. I know the game has changed and that’s 20 or 30 years ago but they are more understanding. There is nothing wrong with that niceness within the club. In terms of stats we dominated lots of teams so maybe there is a soft touch somewhere that we haven’t more points.”

Last weekend he was in Newcastle and as he came out of the stadium where promotion was still being relished and celebrated he was spat out and had oaths and bits of rubbish hurled at him. On Wednesday he watched Mourinho enjoy his moment in front of his fans and saw the disappointing sourness of the Barcelona response. That’s how the game has gone. Ipswich, for now, is a bastion.

“I’m not under the illusion that I can’t lose my job. The danger is the situation I got into at [Manchester] United and at Sunderland where this momentum starts and there is nothing you can do to stop it and it ends up badly.

“I’m not saying the owner wouldn’t sack me in two minutes, I don’t take things for granted like that, I’m just saying that I don’t think he gets bogged down in things like that, I don’t think he even reads what is being said, he makes his own judgments. He is switched on like that. Makes his own judgments. And that’s the way the club is.”

Sleepy Suffolk. When he went there first we wondered which would have the bigger impact on the other. Ipswich on Roy Keane or Roy Keane on Ipswich. Befitting the theme of his first season, the result is probably a draw. A team which works hard and honest to make the most of what it has. A manager appreciating the environment in which he works and lives.

He seems settled now. Into management and into his life post-playing.

“It’s the worst feeling ever when you stop. Young lads who get bad injuries and have to stop early, I don’t know how they cope, how do they deal with it? I was lucky I got to play for so many years and it was still hard to stop. For some lads nothing will ever replace the buzz.”

Of those men who will spend their lives fixing a hole by pouring drink into it, Paul McGrath is one of the most beloved and tragic. Keane has always been a good friend to his old team-mate and as such he doesn’t sugar-coat the message when asked.

“I was talking to Paul a couple of months ago. Everybody loves Paul, but Paul knows the score. He knows where to go and get help. He says it himself. He has to help himself. It has to be down to Paul. I can’t do it for him. How many people in Ireland have tried to help Paul? He knows by now where to get help.

“When I was having my own escapades I hope I was being young and raw and stupid. I went too far sometimes, but my social life in that way had a short life-span. Burned out. The penny dropped a few years ago for a number of reasons. Thank God. I care about Paul. I care about the man. When the playing stops the buzz goes, but for some lads that need is there even when playing. I can just say to Paul that he can stop if he goes to the right people.

“When you stop playing there is a bit of boredom. People throw drink at you. Not helping. Paul knows where to go. He has to want it. Living in Ireland, the drink is going to be there all the time. When I come back I get a bit of a buzz for two or three days. I think it’s embedded in us. This thing, let’s get out, there’s something on here and there. Drink. It’s in the air.”

They had an end-of-season do the other night in Ipswich. Paul Merson was the guest speaker. He’s been down that road pretty far. Made Keane think.

“Especially when you stop playing and you are getting up for the day and there is no buzz, you need it. It’s a problem. It’s there, especially in the Irish players, I notice. In my short time in management I notice that just about every incident we have had to deal with that is drink-related, it is Irish lads. It’s an issue with Irish players. Always.”

Earlier this year when Thierry Henry committed his handball against humanity and our entire race swooned in shock, Keane was accused of living in the past because he compared the FAI’s handling of the incident with the historic incompetence which marked the Saipan business.

Now, though, he seems content with living in the present tense. His view on the Henry incident when it comes up in conversation is no more acerbic than to ask what we have learned ourselves from it.

“It’s like me and Mourinho. What separates me from him now. Every manager looks at him and says there are things to learn. He wins trophies. He wins big matches. He wins close matches. He wins competitions. Do we have to get a little bit more cynical? If one of our lads did what Henry did and Ireland went through to the World Cup and everybody was packing their bags in the next few weeks. Would there be many turning down the trip on principle? I don’t think there would.

“There is an innocence to us. Look at all these winning positions we lose. Even at Sunderland myself, I look back and we have the lead in games and we are still playing with two up front. Pride! The biggest managers in the world are saying I just want to play one up front. Chelsea have some of the best strikers in the world there. They play one up front. United played Man City last week. Berbatov cost £30 million and is on the bench.

“There are times. Ireland v Israel at home a few years ago. We have the lead. Looking back it’s time for us to shut up shop. Maybe you fake injury. Slow it. Does it have to come from the manager? Slow it down. Break their rhythm, you don’t have to keep going for it.

“I look at Mourinho and I try to pick things up, don’t worry. Lots of guys. I like [Rafael] Benitez. I learn a bit of that and a bit of this. This season coming up is an important season for me. They are all important but this one is big.”

He has an idea that the Championship is like a jungle swamp. It can suck good managers in and keep them there so that they never escape. Gordon Strachan and David Jones, he cites as decent Premier League managers who are in the mire right now, part of the scenery. And other guys have a window where their stock keeps rising and they make the jump to freedom. Roberto Martinez had a good spell with Swansea and FA Cup success against Portsmouth and, hey, he was up and away to Wigan in the Premiership.

Either that happens or you take your team up and keep them up. He reckons Ipswich will need to be competing in the top six to eight sides next season if he is to continue receiving the benefit of the doubt from the town and the club’s owner. Clarity is a helpful thing.

“So, I’m relaxed. I am in a better position to know where we need to go at Ipswich than I was this time last year. I suppose people would say, ‘I hope so!’ Maybe I read a bit much last year into winning those last two games of the season when I came in. Two players were outstanding in those games. Giovanni was brilliant but he went back to Spurs and David Norris, got injured in first game. We lost him for four months. Then other players didn’t settle in quickly and we had to chop and change. But I have learned.”

This end-of-season time, from the outside you would think it had the air of the last days in school before the liberation of the summer holidays. The sun shining through high windows and wasps trespassing on the peace, everybody waiting for the bell to ring and liberation. This is the busiest time of the year, though.

“Staff meetings. Sort out pre-seasons. I’ll try to get an assistant manager. No relaxing really. Time is short. The players are back to work at the end of June. A manager’s holidays clash with the kids’ school year. So we have to take them out for a week or so and find some place or some way of relaxing and recharging without thinking about football.”

He is thinking of taking on an assistant manager and has put out a feeler to a specific person already.

“I could ring the League Managers’ Association and get a list of hundreds of guys. I have somebody in mind, though. I’ve rung. Left a message. We’ll talk. Have to meet him for a cup of tea first. The chemistry is important. You want somebody you can be close too, somebody with experience. Not to be looking over your shoulder and wondering is he waiting to step into your job when you are shown the door!”

He added a couple of new voices to his staff this year and enjoyed the freshness that they brought to the set-up. A more experienced assistant manager might provide some of that experience Ipswich need.

Keane himself has changed his routine a little since his Sunderland days.

“Yeah, I’m more on the training pitch. Not doing much more, but watching a lot more. I know I can overdo it when I am there. I am intense. It’s getting the balance. When to be in and when not to be in. I live near the training ground. I feel I should go in but sometimes it’s best not to. When we lost 7-1 to Everton at Sunderland. And we won the next week against Bolton.”

He spoke to Sam Allardyce after a game once and “He said to me the worst day of each week is the match day!”. “I identified with that. John Robertson, after we played Villa, said to me this is the best Monday to Friday job in the world. That’s what it is!”

Five days a week in the best job in the world. Better than he hoped for back when the buzz died.

KEANE SPEAK

On Paul McGrath

"Everybody loves Paul . . . . He knows where to go and get help. He says it himself. He has to help himself. It has to be down to Paul. I can't do it for him. He knows by now where to get help"

On Jose Mourinho

"I look at Mourinho and I try to pick things up. Every manager looks at him and says there are things to learn. He wins trophies. He wins big matches. He wins close matches. He wins competitions."