SIDELINE CUT: In the end, it wasn't so much a matter of the heart as the hip. Up until two days ago, it would have been inconceivable that the sad and bathetic closure to Roy Keane's international career could have become any more inglorious or drawn out. But when the matter is reduced to furious debate over the finer points of hip operations that nobody really has the first notion about, it is time for silence.

Keano has gone, in flat and forgettable circumstances. The attempts to brew up a storm over in Scotland midweek were forced and jaded. Even Eamonn Dunphy's cursory midweek television rant sounded hollow and washed out.

The Keane story has dragged on so long it has left everybody numb. At this stage, even Roy Keane must be tired of hearing about Roy Keane.

Brian Kerr was probably slightly put out at the timing of the announcement, but he dealt with it assuredly and has already moved on. He is better off with this clean sweep. Already, the image of Keane in a green shirt seems dated and retrospective.

Of all the old clips shown of the best and worst of times in the Corkman's green career, one stood out. After Keane's first international goal, Steve Staunton led the usual cavalcade for the ritual session of kissing and heavy petting. It was shocking how young Keane looked, with the Tears For Fears tangle of hair above his brow. And the other striking thing is Staunton's delight. He could not look any more happy if he was running to greet his kid brother.

It isn't reading too much into it to suggest Staunton had big time for the tyro during that period. After all, Keane possessed many of the qualities Staunton held dear; he was lippy and forthright and independent and up for a laugh.

In short, he fitted in. Blending, mixing in, is of paramount importance in dressing-room culture and particularly in the parishes of English soccer. The rules of engagement are time-honoured and simple. It was when Keane, for reasons borne of either necessity or choice, ignored the rules and craved privacy and quit drinking and presented a solemn and glacial veneer that it became difficult for the traditionalists to understand him.

Over the years, the English game became saturated with colour, both on the terraces and through television, but the philosophy has always remained black and white. Soccer players are rarely complicated people. Keane's re-invention of himself could not sit easily in the jovial, old-fashioned atmosphere of the Irish dressing-room.

Old Trafford has long been his ivory tower and now, in the autumn of his professional life, Keane can be precisely who he likes. Such is the palace that Ferguson has built. He does not care if his players are friends, if they even have friends. He just facilitates the conditions in which they can perform.

People in Ireland probably feel robbed by the final and abrupt sundering of relations with Keane for all sorts of reasons. The pitched emotions of the summer created proprietorial feelings about the player in both the pro and anti camps that were misplaced. Those who longed for the heroic homecoming feel betrayed. Those who bleated that he was a phoney to begin with feel both vindicated and maddened that he has done it again.

But the only important fact of Keane's doomed love affair with his country was dead before the World Cup even began. The fundamental point is he was not on the field for those games, and only when he finishes playing, only when there are no big days ahead will the magnitude of what he was denied fully dawn upon him. And he was denied it.

His relationship with Ireland was effectively buried in Saipan. Anyone who knows the first thing about teams must appreciate a squad cannot literally abandon one of their own on a remote land without a word of farewell and then expect that player to come begging for forgiveness a few days later. You just can't do it.

IN hindsight, Keane should have retired after his tragi-comic interview with Tommy Gorman. It is understandable, however, that he didn't. Human nature would have compelled him to remain a thorn in Mick McCarthy's oft-referred to posterior for as long as possible.

In those weeks of the World Cup, it became fashionable to present Keane as a metaphor for a hard, bright, new Ireland and other pseudo-philosophical bunk like that. If anything, he was emblematic of the old Irish rebel spirit. If Yeats were still around, he'd scribble an ode to the man. No Second Roy. The guy used to get pumped up before games listening to the fighting songs of long ago, for God's sake. And his belief that Ireland could win the World Cup wasn't down to any mercenary new approach; it was a glorious and half-mad vision that is more in tune with the mindset of Robert Emmett.

But the real point of Keane anyway is he was never representative of anything other than a really great football player, someone that when playing at his best for Ireland stirred the common soul in a way that is rare in contemporary sport.

Whatever moves Keane made post-McCarthy were always going to be irrelevant. Even if he played for his country again, it couldn't have been the same and it wouldn't have made his absence from the World Cup any less real. As it transpired, his ultimate move was of grandiose inertia. He may have leaned across the table to pass Brian Kerr the sugar bowl, he may not. He may even have picked up the phone to book transport to Scotland for Wednesday night's friendly. But not for the first time, the wires got crossed.

Keane's leave-taking has been protracted and messy and a bit of a yawn. He deserves no acrimony. He has turned up - most of the time - for over a decade and has, lest it be forgotten, already experienced the sounds of Irish booing.

The seriousness of his injury, what he knew prior to meeting Kerr, what he said and what Alex Ferguson said . . . who cares? I still suspect the last phase of Keane's career might be his most distinguished.

Starting from today, those who care to can watch him from afar, this fiercely Irish Cork man now permanently at a remove from Ireland. There are many hundreds of people in Ireland who, quite rightly, feel they have become intimate with the life and times of Roy Keane despite their best efforts. Others will find themselves unable to look away. Either way, the petty wars are over and the lasting sensation is one of emptiness.