Soccer: Another hotel. Another press conference. Somebody should compile a list of all these events and rate them. Five stars: Excellent (at least one walk-out). One star: Disaster (Mick McCarthy/backside/bacon slicer/Burton's window, etc). Tom Humphries reads between the lines at yesterday's press conference in Malahide

Anyway, as promised (and promised and promised) Roy is back. Five stars straight off the bat. And a hotel by the beach too on a sunny evening in late May. All planned just so we can use words like "redolent" or "reminiscent of".

Naturally too, the gang's all here. Things have changed since Saipan (which this is redolent of) but not that much. This will please the gang more than it pleases Roy.

Sky are going live to air with this one, no matter how banal the exchanges might prove. And they can prove to be banal. The usual day-before-match press conference is generally a low-key two-hander with Brian Kerr and Kenny Cunningham taking the Fifth. But today they've got Roy alongside them. It's like Hope and Crosby wandered out of one of those old Road To . . . movies and onto the set of a Clint Eastwood western. Who's the edgy guy? Brian and Kenny sit down and pour orange for Brian and Kenny. Nobody asks Roy has he a mouth on him at all. Roy gazes straight ahead. Can't believe he'd ever have to be in a room with all of us again.

"We'll start with a question for Brian," says Pat the Press Officer. In other words, eat your greens or there'll be no dessert for anyone.

Sky are in first. As if they have convened the entire gathering.

"Brian, you're live on Sky Sports news."

Brian gives his big 'whoopee, if my friends could see me now' face.

"How does it finally feel to have Roy here in Ireland before the game?"

How does it feel? Well, what's he going to say? It feels erotically charged? It feels like an occasion of sin? It feels like the layman's idea of heaven? It feels like I've eaten a curry? Brian says something about the other 58 times Roy has played for Ireland. Mentions that he's got 25 other fellas as well.

And now we're off. Roy sits with his hands by his side. No defensiveness in his posture. Looking lean. Not looking happy. Not looking miserable. Just that don't-fuck-with-me-fellas face he sometimes wears. Trespassers will be prosecuted.

He did a bit of training. Hoping to play if there's no reaction. He's fairly hungry he says. He was disappointed to miss the last match but "unfortunately my hamstring wasn't right".

Not half as disappointed as those who went to Bydgoszcz by mistake, lad.

Sad to report, there are no fireworks. Everything is civil, if a little terse. Roy speaks in a determinedly controlled monotone which advertises his wariness of occasions like this and his broad dislike of his interrogators. All part of the purging process.

What made him come back?

"Lots of things. When I first met Brian the decision was, medically, for me not to come back. I felt that was the right decision at the time but after a year or so with my hip I felt I was managing it a lot better. I had to speak to my own club manager and to Brian obviously."

And emotional reasons? This is an interesting question. Not one Roy is ever going to answer in a forum like this though.

"Lots of reasons," he says. "I feel I've made the right decision."

Is the set-up any different?

Razor smile. You have to be up a little earlier in the day to catch Roy out with one of those.

"I knew that. I don't want to be going over old ground. Things had to change. I was never looking for perfection with the Irish team but I was always looking for progress. I feel that's been happening in the last year or two."

He elaborates. Brian Kerr has impressed him. He gets regular reports from John O'Shea. He's been monitoring things.

"What do you add?" This is a better way of phrasing things than asking Roy what he brings to the party.

"I think the team have done very well but the priority is always to qualify. Maybe they've lacked a bit of experience. Lot of good young players coming through. Lot of experienced players there just ran up a little bit short. All I said to Brian when I met him was that I'd like to be available for selection. I'll have to be playing well for United before he will pick me. That's the way it's been through my career. Never took anything for granted, worked hard. That's what I'll continue to do."

And it's all like that. Occasionally a ghost of a smile flits across his tight features and you can see his brain has made a little joke but censored itself. He's aware that in the broader audience there are some people who view him as the Lord Haw Haw of Irish football. He doesn't want to be seen cracking jokes and laughing it up first day back.

As time wears on, his patience wears down a little.

Would you have had any regrets if you hadn't come back?

"I have come back. I don't know."

Will you be playing in the Unity Cup in London? For a man so famously dismissive of the FA Cup the Unity Cup can't have much cachet.

"No," he says bluntly.

How much are you looking forward to international football again?

"I've always enjoyed the matches but again I was really frustrated with what was going on around me. Football is a tough game, everyone needs to be aiming for the same things. It was frustrating in that sense. I've always been proud to play for my country. I've always felt it was an honour, not a career move. Lots of things have changed. I felt I was fighting a losing battle, it was right for me not to be there in Japan. It was a waste of time.

"Everyone is entitled to their opinions. It wasn't about popularity. People I've met have been very supportive since I've come back. That's part of life."

He speaks about the team qualifying for Germany 2006, how that's the aim.

The conversation, such as it is, expires gently.

We are redirected back to Brian Kerr. We can't get over how he must be feeling.

"How much personal pleasure does it give you to have Roy back?"

The answer is new Kerr, pure Keane.

"It's not an issue of personal pleasure for me . . ."

And what does he bring?

Brian alludes to the faithfully departed, those senior players we have lost since the World Cup. Alan Kelly, Steve Staunton, Niall Quinn . . . Ah, those fellas.

Every mind flashes back to another hotel by the beach, another room, another press conference. Roy's face never flickers.