The sky didn’t split, the ground didn’t rumble. The walls didn’t shake and the air didn’t blacken. Roy Keane walked into a room as an FAI employee and verily everything was pretty much okay. His comfort level grew as the afternoon went on. Which meant that everybody else’s comfort level grew accordingly. Some things will never change.
In the same ballroom as Martin O’Neill had delivered his Day One press conference on Tuesday, Keane’s Day Two version was as much about our vision of him as his vision of the job. His sense that people would be turning up to watch his rivets pop and hear his screech crack the windows wasn’t entirely misplaced, yet he warned us early on that he was going to disappoint.
"There's nothing to tame," he said. "I'm not some sort of animal, you know what I mean? I'm a footballing man, I like to work hard and push people and I suppose that sometimes I have got that slightly wrong on one or two occasions over the years. But generally speaking I look back and think I got a lot of it right.
There to push the players
"There's areas I need to look at, particularly now I'm the assistant – (like) when to step back and hopefully I'll get that right as well. But I'm also there to push the players and put demands on the players, like we did today in training.
“There are some good players and sometimes the players are the last to realise how good they are. We’ve got some really good young players and we’ve got to push them, put demands on them, because from my own experience I used to like that.
“I used to like people pushing me, that’s the name of the game. But there’s a way of speaking to people and I understand all that. There’s a way of getting that message across, how you put the demands on them.
“You have to treat people with respect and, as I said, hopefully the players from the last few days will appreciate that. But also knowing that I need to step back and let Martin run the show. I’m just here to help.”
The hotel laid on twice as many seats as they had for O’Neill and all of them were filled. There were three times as many TV cameras and a bank of photographers standing at the door awaiting his entrance a good 20 minutes before he arrived.
It wasn’t just the scurvy dogs of the press either who were making a bigger deal of him than they had of the manager. The FAI were cranking it up to the max as well. The sponsors’ board that appeared behind his head on all the shots you saw on TV last night was a few square feet bigger than the one that had provided O’Neill’s backdrop.
And whereas the front of the table at which O’Neill was sitting had been draped with a simple blue table cloth, that space was filled yesterday with a banner ad hawking tickets for the Latvia game on Friday night.
It will all settle and find its level in time but nobody was pretending about with whom the fascination lay.
Keane knows who he is. Not alone that, he has a pretty solid idea of who people think he is as well. The longer it went yesterday, the more relaxed he became. It was 25 minutes before anyone brought up the facilities and when it happened it was he himself who went there. Played it for laughs, too.
“We’ve had a lovely few days, the hotel’s been lovely, the food has been excellent, the training ground is lovely – no pot-holes. We’ve had footballs, it’s been great, bibs everything. Major progress.”
All delivered with an I-know-you-know-I-know smirk. This was down-to-business Roy, ready for the job in hand. Ogre Roy exists, no point pretending otherwise. But the flipside is he has had plenty of practice across the years in smoothing over speedbumps.
Big stick
Speak softly and carry a big stick, Teddy Roosevelt said. Just because Keane has tended to do it in reverse doesn't mean it can't work.
“I think that will help me. Strangely enough, if people are thinking that – particularly the players – I don’t think that will be an issue over the next few years because I’m not as bad as everyone makes me out to be in terms of criticising players.
“I’m demanding of players, of course, and hopefully that will never change. But this idea of being, I don’t know, being a bit softer with players – obviously I’m not going to be the one dropping players or leaving players out. That might give me the opportunity to be nicer to players but without being a pal to them either.
“Hopefully the players are in for a pleasant surprise, particularly the lads who’ve not worked with me. I know people can believe what they hear and read. They could be thinking for some reason that some monster’s going to turn up and all of a sudden I’m quite placid.”
And dammit, we very nearly got through the whole day without a mention of the S-word. In fact, he was standing up ready to leave by the time someone shouted, “Martin said on Saturday about Saipan . . .”
“Martin is entitled to be wrong,” he interrupted, smiling.
And with that, he was gone. His second (third?) Ireland career to do with what he will. We watch, rapt as ever we were.
His fault. Ours too.
