Keane puts record straight

As his fellow internationals wandered around him yesterday, untroubled by either punters or the press in the Irish team hotel, Roy Keane knew better than to expect the same levels of disinterest.

A few hours after he had belatedly arrived back in Ireland, the 29-year-old Manchester United midfielder, out and about between the squad's two training sessions, was very much the centre of attention. With his whereabouts the night before having been the subject of back page speculation in the tabloids, there was plenty of interest in hearing the story from the man himself. Keane duly obliged, but not without letting everybody know just how let down he was feeling with those who were asking the questions.

"I was very disappointed to see the things that were written about me supposedly going AWOL," said the Corkman as large numbers of reporters formed a reasonably orderly scrum around him. "The fact is that I left a message with somebody in the FAI and it doesn't seem to have been passed on.

"It's been a bit of a fiasco," continued Keane who, it might be remembered, is no stranger to this sort of communications breakdown. The memory of his failure to show for a trip to the United States four years ago in strangely similar circumstances was still fresh in many of the journalists' memories yesterday, but on this occasion, he insisted, there was nothing to get worked up about.

"Mick knew about it last night," said Keane, who explained that he had stayed on at his club for some additional treatment on a "dead leg" suffered during Sunday's game against Arsenal. "And he had my home phone number, so if it was a problem he could have called me to talk about it, which he didn't."

Keane went on to restate the view he outlined immediately after the Dutch game that, with the panel of players currently available to the Republic, there should be no feelings of inferiority ahead of games like Saturday's in Lisbon.

"Most of our players are playing week in week out in the Premiership and it's just a case of us all carrying what we do with our clubs into the international games. Our record away from home over the last few years is pooor and maybe what we need is little more belief in ourselves as a team.

"I know from talking to Jaap (Stam) afterwards that he felt the Dutch were surprised by how much we knocked the ball around over there last month and I think you'll find that while the Portuguese are an outstanding team made up of outstanding individuals, they'll have sat up and taken notice of that."

Keane mentioned in passing that he felt that Phil Babb and Mark Kennedy might well have been brought back for the game, saying: "I think they've served their punishment but that's something that's out of my hands." However, he subsequently added: "In the circumstances the 11 players who played in Amsterdam deserve the chance to do it again."

At the moment, the only one of those 11 whose place remains any doubt is the Blackburn goalkeeper Alan Kelly, who pulled a muscle in his leg a couple of weeks ago and has not done anything more rigorous than light training since then.

"Initially I was worried I'd miss out," said the 32 year-old yesterday. "When you get a little tear like that you are worried, but not anymore - I've trained for five days and there's no real problem now.

"It happened the day before the Bolton game, we were all preparing for it and I just kicked the ball and it felt like a knife in my thigh. I haven't gone ballistic since then, no kicking the ball 60 or 70 yards or anything like that. But there's no problem - as far as I'm concerned I'll be fit to play.

Assuming he does make it, Kelly will be one of only three starters this weekend who were involved in Ireland's last game at the Stadium of Light, the 3-0 European Championship qualification defeat back in 1995. Along with Jason McAteer and Niall Quinn, the former Preston and Sheffield United goalkeeper was a part of one of Ireland's most miserable away defeats, with three second half goals dealing a severe blow to Jack Charlton's hopes of a fourth major championship finals.

"It was a bizarre game really," said Kelly, "because in the first half I don't think I had anything to do. But then it went completely pear-shaped in the second.

"Then we got absolutely battered. The wind and the rain set in and it was one of the worst nights I've experienced to play football. It was an emotional experience too, because at the end it was obvious that they had qualified but we had to wait until we found out that Northern Ireland had beaten Austria 5-3 to know that we were in the play-offs.

"Hopefully it will be very different this time and there should be a bit of sun, which will please the old bones."