Sundered ties quick in the mending

Never in media briefings has Roy Keane shown such serenity, wit and wisdom, writes Emmet Malone

Outside Sunderland's Stadium of Light a crowd of children and the mothers who had brought them there stood waiting to catch a glimpse of the man they hope will bring good times to the club they love.

They would need, as it turned out, to be patient, for Roy Keane was still caught up indoors in the welter of interviews that followed his unveiling as the manager. A dozen or more television cameras had covered the press conference itself when the body language, as well as the words, from the top table suggested at least one of the bridges burned in the summer of 2002 really had been rebuilt.

That, though, was just the beginning, and after the television people began to pack up, the 35-year-old was asked, and agreed, to meet with print and other media.

Irish and English dailies, Sundays, local papers and diverse radio stations gathered in separate areas of the stadium's "Directors' Suite" and, one after another, got time from a man who, famously, has long had little for the media.

Looking relaxed after some months away from the game, Keane calmly, insightfully and often humorously answered each and every question without any hint of the rancour that often hung over his encounters with Irish journalists.

Only once did he seem taken aback - incapable of hiding his surprise when one journalist cited another ex-professional as having said he (Keane) had learned much from Maurice Setters. The facial expression changed momentarily as he asked, "Really?" No further reaction was required.

When the turn of the Irish media came he started the process all over again, answering many of the questions he had already addressed several times and quite a few that have held particular fascination for the folks back home since the events of four years ago.

Having first taken a conciliatory line on Mick McCarthy and Saipan, Keane had changed tack when pressed on the matter by English journalists.

"Did I?" he had asked twice with apparently genuine interest when one referred to his acceptance of some responsibility for the debacle.

Pressed again now by Irish journalists, he conceded he would probably change the way he had reacted, a sign of nothing more, he suggested, than the fact he is four years older and wiser.

"Listen," he sighed, "I used to argue with my wife. We wouldn't speak for days. But, honestly, now when we argue I'll make it up and think, I don't like this dragging on for too long. It's just experience, because not talking for two or three days is no good for nobody."

Those comments were followed by an expression of support for another of those he fell out with, Steve Staunton, and an insistence they too can work together in the years ahead.

"He's a good manager and I wish him well," said Keane. "Hopefully he'll be onto me a lot because if he is it means the Irish lads here are doing well and then everybody's happy."

McCarthy, though, is another matter, and while Keane says his relationship with the former manager is something "I weigh up on a day-to-day basis", he did not sound in a hurry to make up.

As for his view of his old mates from the Irish media, there was no hint of animosity but little sense either that he is looking forward to the regular meetings that seem likely to follow his move to management.

When he announced he would at the very least establish a base in Sunderland after learning from the mistake of failing to do so in Glasgow when with Celtic, one journalist quipped we too might soon be buying in the area.

"Christ," he spluttered, with a chuckle and a shake of the head, "I'll be commuting after all then."