On his return to Dublin with the Irish squad yesterday Brendan Menton, the general secretary of the Football Association of Ireland, attempted to clarify comments he had made to reporters before his departure from Seoul which appeared to rule out any possibility of a return to international football for Roy Keane.

Menton insisted that his remarks, widely reported yesterday, had been misinterpreted and that Keane's international future, if there is to be one, is a matter for the manager, Mick McCarthy, and Mick McCarthy alone.

"This team will go on without him," Menton had said, "there is a limited life cycle to a player's career . . Roy is nearly 31 and at some stage soon he was going to retire. It happened to be sooner than expected, but so be it.

"That's the end of it now . . . the Roy Keane issue has gone away. I think the team and their performances showed why it has. It's an irrelevance. It would be very difficult for anyone to argue that the team would have done any better with him here."

Speaking to RTÉ yesterday Menton said: "I was thrown a question about Roy Keane's future participation in the team and the first point I would always make in that regard is that that is a matter for the manager and, indeed, for the player himself.

"As officials of the FAI we don't involve ourselves in team matters, so it is not for me to make that decision.

"The other point I made was a comment on the progress this young team had made during in the World Cup. The simple point I made was that the team was going have to learn to live without Roy Keane at some stage because Roy is 30, 31, and 2004 would probably be his last international tournament - that was simply the point I was making. But I would emphasise that it's very much a matter for the manager and for the player himself to resolve this."