Time for us all to exorcise demon image

SIDELINE CUT / KEITH DUGGAN:It is heartening to see that Roy Keane's four-month hiatus has not dampened the desire to portray him as less a man than a beast belonging to the imagination of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Keane has not, as you might have imagined, spent the first half of the Premiership season jogging and lifting light weights, watching The Sopranos and making busy with the hoover around the house. Nope, he has just been "fuming". Sitting in the pitch dark somewhere, whispering poisonous nothings to himself about Alfie and Mick and Big Niall and Trigger presumably, little pistons of steam shooting out of his earlobes.

When the geysers eventually quit, he returned to action on Thursday night for the Manchester United reserves. And guess what? It was a "typically snarling" comeback from Keane, featuring at least one of his ferocious "ear-bashing" spectacles that shocked the few diehards that watched the match.

During the summer, when England's chief sports writers lauded the demise of Keane with the type of haughty verbal histrionics that we thought had disappeared with Lord Denning, we got a bit tetchy on this side of the water.

Our well-heeled sports scribbling brethren across the water, dulcet of tone, Italian-leathered of shoe and extravagant of expense account, had struck a collective nerve. Hastily, many indignant ripostes were fired off at that side of the water which all amounted to the same high-pitched cry. "Don't tell us how to denounce our own, especially our brightest and our best!"

Never mind that in Irish libraries are decades of Irish articles pillorying an entire first division worth of English-born footballers, from Paul Gascoigne to Alan Shearer. Never mind that when the English game was at its bleakest in post-Heysel days, commentators in this country were fond of loftily declaring that the sickness of the game was just a manifestation of the demise of English society. Never mind that even during the era of Jack Charlton, the walking definition of bread-and-butter England, we in this country were gleeful and unapologetic in our desire to stuff it to them. We wore it as a badge of honour.

All of this paled in comparison to the brief but timbre-filled "Hear, Hear" of approval that emanated from Canary Wharf whenever Keane was sent-home in, ahem, disgrace.

And the extent of some of the English opinion on this Irish shambles was astonishingly severe. The only sports person who received such comparably negative comment was Mike Tyson. The English are generally fairly caustic but reserved when it comes to denunciation, at least in those sports pages held in high esteem. But when Keane's World Cup fell apart, they went for him with the very same naked and savage aggression they so loathed in the player himself.

It was funny to behold, as if their typewriters had run off with their innermost thoughts and printed them without their consent. It was clear our English friends were at a loss as to how to categorise Keane.

Foolishness or boorishness they could forgive. But it wasn't as if Keane got tangled with a page three pin-up or photographed in some nightclub with his shirt ripped apart. That stuff was manageable but a sustained, a provocative and most distressingly, an intelligent attack on the key authority figure in soccer's chain of command, The Gov'nor, just would not stand.

So they guillotined him.

OF COURSE, it was partly understandable. At the same time, the comment over here, where we felt we had squabbling rights on Keane by dint of nationality, was also hot and heavy. In these long, dreary days, I often think with no little astonishment of those days in late May when the country went gloriously mad. The highlight for me was the day after Keane's television interview, when Joe Duffy asked Mná Na hEireann did they not think Roy was the spittin' image of Adonis.

The fall of Roy was an issue that gripped us so fiercely that the more grave minded and distinguished of our commentators felt obliged to clear our muddled thoughts on the issue. Day after day and especially on Sundays, those who normally tell us about the state of Irish politics, Irish economics, Irish souls would prefix their oral essays with, "I'm no expert on sport but . . ." And on they would natter for hours and days about Keane's apparent obsession, his (yawn) dark side, about how he was a desperate role model for our children, etc, etc. It was dreadful psycho babble and worse than that, it was just used as cheap and sensational airtime; it was indignation and outrage for the shallow sake of indignation and outrage.

And now, when everyone has calmed down and the country's great sages have returned to the business of pronouncing on weightier matters, Roy Keane is getting back to what it is he does best. I scanned the radio stations in vain yesterday morning hoping to hear that those who predicted in the summer he was destined for breakdown say that maybe they just got it wrong, maybe they were a bit previous in taking out the straitjacket. But no, just Christmas carols.

At least in London, the mystification over Roy Keane is genuine. Here, the strength of emotion is more obscure. If you cared so passionately about his apparent decline, you have got to have an opinion on the first steps of his return.

Tomorrow, Keane might well play first-team football for the first time since August. It has been a long break. The guess here is that he has spent it not fuming but just chilling and reflecting on an extraordinary year. The last time Keane spent time away from the game, he returned equipped with the brilliant intensity that many claimed would consume him. The guess here is that this time, he will come back with the same repertoire of skill and ferocity that leaves millionaire stars in awe of him, allied to a newly-acquired refusal to be baited. That he will, in short, enter the mature and richest phase of his athletic life.

We may or may not witness that in a Republic of Ireland context. It would be wonderful if he has the requisite energy and desire to continue playing internationals but there are a hundred reasons, from self-preservation to sheer fatigue of the soul, why he may already have privately decided that his days in green are over.

Either way, there should be no carping on about his duty to the fans or to the country when the new Irish manager circus kicks-off in the New Year. It is a decision he should be allowed to make without pressure or criticism. Anyhow, one step at a time. The good news for Christmas is that Roy Keane is back. Suddenly soccer is interesting again. They say he is still fuming, no less. And snarling too, always an encouraging sign.

Extra, Extra: the wolf is free. Get down on all fours, face the moon and howl for joy.