Return of Roy Keane

Madam, - Quite a few of your correspondents rate the powers of Roy Keane higher than he does himself

Madam, - Quite a few of your correspondents rate the powers of Roy Keane higher than he does himself. Brenda O'Hanrahan is the latest (April 21st). "If Keane had stayed, Ireland had a good chance of success." No doubt, by success she means winning the World Cup!

Michael Gilmartin (April 15th), gives us more of the same guff: "I go so far as to say that had Keane stayed we would have reached the final."

In the face of all this, what did Keane think? Well, in an interview with Dick Hogan in The Irish Times the day after being conferred with an honorary degree from UCC in May 2002, he said precisely: "We'll be lucky to qualify for the second round."

The truth is, all the blather about reaching the final or winning the World Cup was started by Eamon Dunphy and taken up by almost every journalist in the country as a stick to whack McCarthy and the FAI for their so called lack of professionalism - speaking of which I might mention the "professionalism" of Roy Keane.

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Where shall we start? His past drinking; the slagging-off of his team mates in public; his deliberate, violent fouling of an opponent? - Yours, etc.,

BRIAN KIRBY,

Oaklands Drive,

Rathgar,

Dublin 6.