SOCCER/Roy Keane Testimonial: Roy Keane may always harbour a smouldering grievance about the manner in which he left Manchester United but even for this notorious grudge-bearer, a man defiantly free of sentimentality, his testimonial night should supply him with a lifetime of happy memories.
A crowd of just under 70,000 squeezed into Old Trafford to pay tribute to the United, Celtic and Republic of Ireland legend, with Keane playing 45 minutes for both sides and, appropriately, ending up on the winning team courtesy of Cristiano Ronaldo's second-half goal.
There were no staged photo-calls shaking hands with Alex Ferguson and, privately, Keane is understood to sympathise with Ruud van Nistelrooy over his ongoing contretemps with the United manager.
But this was an occasion when the rancour and acrimony that has engulfed what has been a turbulent season at Manchester United was temporarily put aside.
Keane received a hero's welcome and the largest-ever attendance for a testimonial game will have swelled his bank balance to the tune of £3m, a significant proportion of which will be distributed between his favoured charities. Officially, the number of Celtic supporters inside Old Trafford was around the 23,000 mark. In reality, the vast swathes in green and white probably exceeded 30,000, the largest away support that has ever been witnessed at a British ground.
It was a beery, colourful, raucous ensemble and it will be a similar story at St James's Park tomorrow when Celtic are the visitors for Alan Shearer's testimonial.
Keane is 35 this summer and it is the age when even the greatest footballers start to get racked by insecurity. Keane is harder on himself than anyone and nobody can be sure we will see him on a football field again. Nobody apart from his family and a few of his closest friends back at the Temple Acre Tavern in Cork.
An unhappy commuter, Keane is sick of the M74 already and says his first consideration is spending more time with Theresa and the kids. There are five of them to think of and they were all with him as he emerged via a guard of honour from both sets of players.
Keane managed to combine looking proud and moved with being awkward and fidgety. He avoided eye contact with Alex Ferguson as he made his way to the centre circle and he was soon beckoning to Ryan Giggs to hurry up bringing everyone else over.
He has always hated celebrity, found the attention uncomfortable.
"Closure," was the word he used. "It's not really my scene, people making a fuss, but it wouldn't have been right, ending it without a proper farewell." Mancunians and Glaswegians were singing in unison by the end. Yet, as Keane waved sheepishly to the crowd and the swagmen on Matt Busby Way continued to flog their Ruud van Nistelrooy "Goal Machine" T-shirts, some United fans could have been forgiven for wondering whether Alex Ferguson is allowing personal grudges to harm the club.
First there was his Keane, whom he had described as the best player he had worked with in five decades in the business; then Van Nistelrooy, a striker championed by United's manager only six weeks ago as "the best in Europe." Add to that his fall-outs with Jaap Stam and David Beckham and it is hardly surprising that fans are starting to question how significant Ferguson's habit of ostracising so many talented players has been to their inability to win titles recently.
Testimonials, of course, are not a time for recriminations but United's more thoughtful supporters will be bewildered by Ferguson's attempts to airbrush the breakdown of his relationship with Keane out of the club's history. "A lot of idle chatter" was his interpretation, in the souvenir programme, of the revelations that accompanied Keane's departure in November.
Ferguson would clearly rather remember the good days and, having laid a few ghosts to rest, Keane may now be on the same wavelength. Whether Van Nistelrooy will ever get "closure" is another matter entirely.
