LOCKERROOM/Tom Humphries It's a terrible, terrible thing to give a man a column's worth of space to fill every week when the man doesn't really have anything to say for months at a time. And then when he does have something to say it's usually along the lines of, well okay then I will have the dessert.

As if forcing him to labour on a blank column under the blazing heat of a deadline wasn't sufficiently cruel they tantalise the poor soul not just with a conveyor belt of tasty controversies but with a parade of other, more successful columnists. People who have a go.

Having a column to fill is the one situation in life where a chronic inability to see just one side of the story is a debilitating handicap. In the column world the one-eyed man is king. The newspaper column is a space best filled by prolix polemicists and religious wingnuts. When a little controversy goes off they know instantly who is to blame. They have everyone's rap sheet ready.

This column, as you may have noticed, is somewhat dithery. In eight years or so it has been strong on the subject of drugs in sport (bad) and fine weather (good). On everything else it prevaricates. It tap dances. It gets arse welts from sitting on fences. Have-a-go columnists laugh behind this column's back. That's okay. This column sees where they're coming from.

Fatally but inevitably this column finds itself in a minority of one on the Roy Keane issue. This column came home from the World Cup to discover every person in this country and its neighbouring island had acquired a strong and bellicose opinion on the Roy Keane business. This column had no such thing.

This column thinks nobody is entirely to blame and all parties involved are somewhat to blame. It thinks Roy is more to blame for leaving but the management side bears more of the responsibility for not getting him back. You see this column is not exactly uttering the thoughts other columns are even afraid to think.

This column thinks an Irish team without its greatest player in it is a sad thing to see and such a team represents a failure of management. It thinks Mick McCarthy is an eminently decent man but cannot understand his attitude to the Irish media or why he never afforded Roy Keane the same sort of elevated consultative captaincy which he himself enjoyed under Jack Charlton.

This column also thinks Roy Keane is a decent person, perhaps the most interesting interviewee this column has met and the most misunderstood. This column thinks he was wrong to leave Saipan but sincere in his reasons. This column can't understand why Roy's reaction to events is so often disproportionate to events themselves. This column believes that perhaps Roy would be better suited to a profession where that very failing is a virtue. He would have made a good newspaper columnist.

That's it really. It's not a very sexy column is it , when a writer shakes his head and just says, "sad, all very sad". But that's how it is and Saturday afternoon at the Stadium of Light was sadder still.

This column has become quite defensive about Roy Keane in the last couple of weeks. The nation's top polemicist, Eamon Dunphy, stated on the televised Cold War which is The Premiership with himself and Gilesie, that some of the British coverage of the Keane issue has bordered on racism. It has.

Keane has been portrayed as one of those raging ape-like figures used to depict Irish people in Punch cartoons in the 19th century. He has a temper. He has strong opinions. He is the most wound up player in football in every sense of the word. He has committed some bad tackles in his time and he has made some bad mistakes.

So, he's a mad, bad Irish ape, who has written more books than he has read. He's Osama Bin Keano. He's a roughneck Eliza Doolittle who can't appreciate what the Henry Higgins that is Manchester United has given him. the Daily Telegraph thinks he should be made face the widely admired British justice system. And Des Lynham thinks it's a terrible thing little kids should be seeing Roy Keane on telly.

On Saturday David Beckham committed an appalling foul on Phil Babb. It was described as a "comedy" by one English Sunday paper yesterday, not mentioned by most others. Jason McAteer committed a bad foul on Keane and then proceeded to wind him up. Naturally, this column also thinks Jason McAteer is a decent and quite misunderstood person. Winding Roy Keane up at a bad time in his career should be beneath him, though.

Of course, Roy Keane fell for it. Dangle a carrot and he'll snap your hand off. That's the banker bet. Late in the game he elbowed Jason from behind as he went past him. It wasn't the sort of assault that will permanently scar Jason. If you want to do damage to somebody in that position you can do real damage. It wasn't very venomous, more of a cuffing, but it was wrong and it was dopey. Roy Keane looked like he knew that.

This column can't defend Roy Keane. He wouldn't expect to be defended. This column hasn't the heart to get up on the high horse, though. Keane tries. All the evidence is he tries. He has given up drink. He is more controlled on the field. He stands up and takes responsibility for his actions.

There are worse things in the world than Roy Keane. He deserves more than the cruel burlesque that his life has become. He is a great athlete, a matchless competitor, an interesting man. The world didn't have to look hard to find his flaw and though Keane would concede straight up he would exploit the flaws of another pro, still. Enough. It hurts to see him isolated and ridiculed and mocked.

This column thought Eamon Dunphy was wrong to cut into Niall Quinn on Saturday night. This column should, of course, say it is Niall Quinn's ghostwriter and is hopelessly compromised and, of course, finds Niall as decent as all the other central characters in the mess. In fact this column is the media lowlife in the whole business.

Having watched the teletext on Saturday and learned of the Keano/Jason debacle this column e-mailed Quinn and begged and whined to be told "off the record" just what had gone on. This column had just finished watching The Cold War with Eamon and Gilesie when the phone rang.

Niall Quinn's confidence is hereby betrayed with good intentions and the hope of forgiveness. With seconds to go in the game Quinn had made up his mind to approach Roy in the tunnel after the game and shake his hand and tell him that enough was enough, life was too short etc. etc.

He'd listened to 90 minutes of Roy Keane being jeered. He'd heard Roy had made a bit of an effort to be conciliatory in Saturday's Irish Times. He wanted to reciprocate. You see somebody you've known for along time going through what Roy Keane is going through in England right now and something stirs inside you.

Of course, Roy having been red carded was going to disappear up the tunnel quicker than everyone else was. And then he would vanish into Citadel United for another few months. So Niall made a quick decision and even though Roy had been sent off for elbowing a friend and a team-mate he ran across and publicly shook his hand and said his piece. Keane accepted.

Alex Ferguson thought Niall was winding Roy up and they rowed about it later. Eamon Dunphy thought it was public relations. The panel on ITV thought it was none of Niall Quinn's business. Lots of people I know just thought, yuck! To me, though, Roy Keane is a great and wounded athlete. He's also a kid from Mayfield who made it to the top in the biggest club in the world. We can poke sticks at him and paint his sins on his forehead and turn him into a carnival if we want to.

We can strip him down to a one dimensional caricature, we can decide he has relinquished the right to be respected, we can watch a grotesque season of one Irish player after another showing how tough they are by publicly baiting Roy Keane.

Or we can risk public derision and put a hand out to him. We can see both sides of the story. I'm for that. Knew I'd find something I wanted to say in the end.