What precisely did Roy Keane call Mick McCarthy? Well, among other things, he was alleged to have said he was English, which is the truth. Nothing wrong with that. He's an Englishman with an Irish father and he chose to play for Ireland, the only country which would ever offer him an international career. Nothing wrong with that either.
Any athlete who doesn't maximise his chances in life is a fool; but anyone who believes that Englishness can be transmuted into Irishness by merely donning a shirt is equally foolish. Nor does it matter. That he is not Irish, but an Englishman, English born, English raised, who has spent his entire life in Britain, is irrelevant. After all, with somewhat less justification, Roy Keane can call me English, for I was born in England too, though I have spent more time in Ireland than any Irish person of his age.
Mansion in Normandy
So. Call me English. Am I insulted? No. Come to that, call me French. Am I happy? Delighted. Thank you, now that's been agreed on, I think I shall withdraw to my mansion in Normandy, to drink Calvados every evening and eat baguettes every morning, and unfailingly enjoy a summer worthy of the name.
But of course, that's not the issue, is it? Had Mick McCarthy been born in France, with an Irish father and a French mother, and spent all his life there, we would not engage in this delightful fiction that he is Irish. For the burdens of a millennium of history are carried in our language, and forbid us such straightforward honesty in the case of Mick McCarthy, the Englishman.
So we are left with the final word of his address. What noun did Roy Keane employ in the vocative case with Mick McCarthy? According to this newspaper and the Sunday Times, the Irish skipper said that the Irish manager was an "English ****".
Ah. This is puzzling, for there are many words in the English language with that many letters. So what could the missing word have been? Was it vaguely meteorological? Did he call Mick "You English rain", or "You English mist", or "You English snow"?. Or did his word have animal connotations? Was it boar? Or bull? Or lion? Or swan? Or fish? Or deer? Did Roy say to Mick, "You English deer"? Or did it just sound like something bestial, when in fact he fluted, "You English dear". Was he being affectionate, and Mick didn't like it? This seems unlikely, somehow. Some footballers might take it amiss if you become over-physical in the team bath - hmmmm, can I wash that lovely bouncy thing for you? - but, generally speaking, they go in for a lot of physical affection, indulging in a great deal of safe celebration after a goal has been scored.
Stronger clue
We're given a stronger clue about what Roy might actually have said to Mick by the Sunday Independent, which reported that the words used were: an "English c**t". Well, going back to Mick's qualification for Ireland, it might well be that his captain was calling him an English Celt: hardly grounds for the bust-up that followed.
Or he might momentarily have got it into his head that Mick was an Anglo-Saxon Egyptian Christian: "You English Copt". Or maybe another nationality was involved. Perhaps the expression was "You English clot", a term of affectionate abuse to which Mick took exception. Which of course he would do if his middle name were Romanov and he were a haemophiliac, whiling away his time as manager of Ireland before being re-enthroned as a thin-blooded Tsar. If that's the case, Roy, I'd apologise now, before you learn that "knout" is not Barnsley for "nothing".
On the other hand, perhaps Roy was complaining about Mick's fairly predictable use of north country English: "You English cant". Or maybe he was simply making an observation about the inability of English people to do things right: "You English can't".
Or was he was concluding that Mick was undeveloped, or small, or a mere bit of paper: "You English chit"? Maybe he was of the opinion that Mick expected more reverence than he actually deserved: you English "cult". Or possibly he thought his manager resembled a prehistoric burial chamber made of stone slabs: "You English cist".
This is unconvincing. "Cist" is Welsh, and Roy Keane's Welsh is said to be poor. On the other hand, if he was saying, "You English cist", meaning that he was a box used for sacred utensils, that is rather more plausible, that "cist" coming from the Latin, a language Roy is altogether more at home in. Or maybe he was addressing his manager as a bodily cavity containing liquids: "You English cyst". That'd be worth a clobbering, for sure.
Very likely, Roy merely referred to Mick as a gaberdine or burberry, as in "You English coat". A bit below the belt, what? Or was Roy admiring Mick's lethal similarity to a six-gun - "You English Colt", or a young horse, ditto? Perhaps Roy ornithologically called Mick "an English coot", or more justifiably, addressed him as "an English cart", which he certainly resembled in his playing days.
Hmmm. All conjecture. So what was the word that Roy said that was so terrible that grown, mature adults are not allowed to see it? For of course, that sanctimonious fig-leaf of asterisks has been blindingly successful in concealing the terrible truth from the rest of us. But what about the journalists who saw the word before hurriedly deleting it? Are those poor b******s now in therapy, suffering from post-traumatic c**t disorder?