OPINION: Tom Humphries feels that Roy Keane has bowed to the considerable will of his employers in announcing his retirement from the international game

"If you shut up for a minute, I'll tell you the story . . ." Suddenly it was clear that Brian Kerr was having a bad day. The microphones crowded the airspace under his nose. The TV lights blinded him. The evening was filled with questions. Roy Keane. Roy Keane. Roy Keane.

We should have known that the Keane saga would have at least one jagged night of drama left in it. Keane once again cut the cord with the rest of the Irish squad yesterday but as with the entire business from last May onwards, there was nothing clean or surgical about the act. A short understated press release from the player was followed within the hour by a rather more extemporaneous contribution from Brian Kerr. The Irish manager put flesh on the bare bone detail. It wasn't pretty.

It was a banal day with an extraordinary ending, a late afternoon twist that instantly ended the brief honeymoon period of Brian Kerr's management of the international side.

Kerr had gone to Hampden Park for a brief runabout before tonight's friendly international. Midway through the session he took a phone call from his agent Fintan Drury. The call altered the colour of a day which was already going badly.

A little over an hour later Kerr was back in Kilmarnock with his back pressed against a cool white wall in the lobby of the Park Hotel asking the media to shut up for a minute. Soon he was expressing disappointment, lots of it over broken promises and broken agreements. He spoke for just three minutes but it was a remarkable addition to the catalogue of memorable press conferences which have been the milestones of this controversy. When he'd finished speaking we had more than just a case of a player retiring. We had bad faith, bad timing and more fences which need mending.

This morning we must weigh two versions of how it all ended and note that at the end as at the beginning there is no small degree of bitterness.

Brian Kerr is adamant that by the end of his three-hour meeting with Roy Keane in Manchester last Thursday he had secured an "unequivocal" agreement from the player that not only would he be returning to the Irish international team but that he would make the journey to Scotland this week to begin the process of re-integrating himself with his former colleagues. It's a version of events which reeks of Kerr's meticulousness and it's hard to see why or how he would have talked himself into imagining an agreement which didn't exist.

Sources close to Keane last night expressed surprise, however, that the Irish manager should have felt he had an unequivocal commitment on the players future. Certainly they felt Keane had been swayed but the monolithic shadow of Manchester United fell over the player as soon as he left the hotel room in which he met Kerr. There was always going to be more.

There is dispute also over the manner in which the statement from Keane was released yesterday and the timing of it. Michael Kennedy, Keane's agent released the statement announcing the players retirement late yesterday afternoon. Kerr was taken by surprise by this.

It is agreed that Keane met with Manchester United hierarchy on Friday and that he also received medical advice from the team which performed his hip surgery last September. Manchester United were eager to point out that they would accept the risk of the player injuring himself in any of the league games which he is paid a reputed £5 million a year to represent the club in but that the medical advice was that Keane was adding significantly to the risk of permanent damage by expending time and energy with Ireland when he could be resting and recuperating. The opinion of Alex Ferguson weighs more heavily with Keane than just about all other footballing opinions.

Last Friday according to Brian Kerr both Alex Ferguson and Roy Keane called him. Ferguson expressed the view that he didn't want Keane to continue in international football. Keane said that he would have to have a rethink over the weekend. Kerr urged the player to have a good think.

By Monday night the fluidity had gone from the situation. Kerr took a call in his hotel room from Roy Keane. The player was sorry, he wouldn't be able to return after all. They spoke for a period and Kerr wished Keane well. Early yesterday Brian Kerr spoke once again with Alex Ferguson.

There was an agreement, Kerr said, that no statement on the issue would be released until tomorrow. By midday the statement had been drawn up, however, and a series of phone calls took place between Keane's representatives and Fintan Drury, Brian Kerr's agent, over the timing of the release of the statement with the Keane people arguing that the story was about to break in Manchester.

And there it stands. Regardless of the arguments which will linger about the timing of the announcement, it is clear that a full stop has been put to Roy Keane's international involvement. It appears that Ireland's greatest player wished to resume work in the green jersey but has bowed to the considerable will of his employers.

It is an unsatisfactory ending which deprives the player of the chance to both write his own ending to the Saipan controversy and to gild his career with international honour. It also provides a revealing glimpse of the relationship between Ferguson and Keane which is so close as to be almost familial. It is difficult to imagine the United manager exerting such an influence on David Beckham, the England captain, whom he also retains in his employ.

For Brian Kerr it was a bad day surely. Having done the difficult work of persuading Keane to mend fences and swallow pride he has been undermined by ghostly presences. The medical advice which Keane apparently got on Friday would surely have been available to the player prior to Thursday's meeting with Kerr and for the new manager the whole business must leave an unpleasant taste.

Kerr himself will probably regret the hasty manner of his press conference with the media backing him against a wall in the hotel lobby and will in time have to find a way of dealing with Manchester United which allows the career of John O'Shea to blossom. His parting declaration that he won't be talking about Roy Keane again seemed hasty and at odds with Kerr's awareness of the public significance of the matter.

When the dust settles, however, Kerr will be glad that the business has ended for once and for all. Whatever about the timing of the public announcement Kerr was at least able to deal with the controversy while he had his players gathered around him. He can see the future clearly now even if the most gifted Irish player of his generation will have no part in it.

"I'll move on" he said "I have forty players here that want to play for Ireland." He left it for the rest of us to read between the lines of his scant words. His task is harder but more clearly defined now.