ROY KEANE RETIREMENT/Expert View: Keith Duggan talks to sports injuries specialist and former Dublin manager Dr Pat O'Neill about Keane's condition
Although the rights and wrongs of the ultimately sudden end to Roy Keane's international career rumble on, relatively little is known about the precise nature of his contentious hip operation.
The statement issued yesterday by Manchester United is adamant that the surgery the Corkman underwent in autumn was career-threatening and that his decision to close his Irish career was one that weighed heavily upon those at the club who advise Keane in such matters. However, the details of the procedure remain undisclosed.
"Given the frame involved, it would seem as if he underwent keyhole surgery of the right hip," Dr Pat O'Neill, the former Dublin football manager who specialises in sports injuries, said yesterday.
"But really, all comment is speculative and the only person completely qualified to comment is whoever carried out the procedure."
In October, Alex Ferguson, debating aloud as to whether his player would fully recover from the operation, gave this description: "The surgeons take the hip joint out of the socket, clean inside the socket and replace it. They hope it falls into place again but they don't know."
Only when the player resumes a full repertoire of activity in training - running, twisting and pivoting - can the success of the procedure be judged.
"Well, that is a football manager speaking about a surgical procedure," commented Dr O'Neill. "Certainly, one would imagine that the recovery rate from a procedure of that nature would take longer than three months, which I think is roughly the amount of time Roy Keane was sidelined."
Although in sympathy with Keane's decision in principle, Dr O'Neill is professionally unsure as to how beneficial the curtailment of his international career will prove.
"Of course it is all quantum-related and when an athlete reaches a certain age, rest becomes an imperative. But I find it hard to see the rationale in ending an international career of five or six games in the context of such a hectic club season. But again, without the facts, that is speculation."
Dr O'Neill has encountered an endless variety of sports-related hip injuries through the years. The condition is especially common among GAA players.
"Often, it is just degenerative, caused by constant wear and tear and by the constant pivoting. It is something you see a lot in former players of 45 to 50 years of age who are often surprised to find they are suffering from arthritis of the hip. At other times, though, the injury can be related to a specific high-impact injury.
"I suppose in terms of Gaelic games, it won't be as common given that the third-man tackle would have been a chief source of such injuries in the past."
In relation to Keane, he believed that hip trouble would not be an untypical ailment, given the player's long career and his style of totally immersing himself at the heart of games.
Regardless of how many more seasons Keane exacts from his body, the chances are that the troublesome hip will revisit him again at various stages of his life.
"That would be the pattern, yes. Athletes who do undergo treatment for hip injuries usually carry the side-effects through to later life to some degree."
