McCarthy's men abroad

There were a few performances of note from Mick McCarthy's men in Britain over the weekend with Richard Dunne and Robbie Keane scoring their first goals of the season, Mark Kinsella coming off the bench in the second half at Leeds for his first taste of Premiership football since the summer and Shay Given managing to get beaten three times in Newcastle's memorable encounter with Manchester United while still doing comfortably enough to emerge from the game with his head held high.

In the third division Geoff Breslan and Sean McCarthy both managed to score and get booked in Exeter's 3-2 defeat of Oxford United while there were welcome outings for former under-21 internationals Dean Delaney and Martin Rowlands both of whom got run outs after starting Saturday afternoon on the bench at Port Vale and Brentford respectively. And then there was another goal for Owen Coyle whose remarkably prolific start to the new season has helped Airdrie to make an early push for promotion to Scotland's top flight.

Still, all of their performances tend to pale into insignificance when set beside Roy Keane's (left) astonishing showing at Newcastle. By his own standards the Corkman had had a relatively subdued afternoon at St James' Park but late on he made sure that it was he who was to make the headlines even though the home side nicked all the points.

Alan Shearer may have initially prevented the United skipper from taking a throw in quickly but the Irishman then reacted stupidly by directing the ball at the striker's head and compounded the offence by lashing out at his opponent as he was about to be booked. Quite what would have happened if David Beckham hadn't been there to restrain him when he was shown the red card is anybody's guess but suffice it to say that Shearer owes the England midfielder a pint or two.

"He left the referee with no option I felt," admitted Alex Ferguson before regaining his composure and going on to moan about the severity of the suspension that Keane would now receive and then insisting that the match official had, in fact, only acted as a result of pressure from the Newcastle crowd.

A home player would probably have stayed on, he observed before, presumably, heading off to tell his captain only to throw balls at, push and lunge after opposition players at Old Trafford in future.