Three months on, and Roy Keane's exit from Saipan still hogs theheadlines. For Keane, the pain has subsided but the hurt unquestionablyremains. Tom Humphries talks to Ireland's former captain about life since those tumultuous days of summer

If you would like to get up and leave now that's fine. Roy Keane will understand. If you've had enough. If it galls you. If you're tired. If you don't want to come along for the ride. He can live with it. He knows. There's been a lot of Roy Keane this summer and maybe you've had enough. He has.

He opened the Sunday papers last week and there on the front was the blood feud between Eamon Dunphy and John Giles. Old friends falling out. And he thought to himself that everything had gone far enough, when Giles and Dunphy are rowing over Roy Keane and newspapers have nothing better to fill their front pages with.

He's coming to Ireland next week to do some signings and he's supposed to appear on Pat Kenny next Friday night but he thinks now he'll give it a miss. He doesn't need to do it, he says, and anyway he thinks RTÉ have had their dealing trick out of him by now. Sitting down with Pat would only stir it up again, and anyway people like Pat and Jack Charlton had their little say during the summer.

"So I don't think I want to give them the satisfaction of their 20 minutes or 12 minutes of me. I'm thinking they can take a run and jump. I'll give it a miss. Time to put all this to bed."

It's still OK if you want to leave now. The doors aren't locked. Unbuckle your seatbelt, walk up the aisle, and disembark. He understands. Four paragraphs down the runway and Roy Keane is telling Pat Kenny to go and take a run and jump. Same old Roy Keane, you say.

But he can laugh. He still has that cutting wit. Last Sunday he watched Cork's bad-tempered exit from the All-Ireland football championship.

"I was sitting there watching the second half and I thought well at least I know where I get it from."

If you want to poke his chest and say to him that, hey, it was Roy Keane who walked out in Saipan and it was Roy Keane who brought out the book, he can see where you are coming from. He thinks the reaction to his book has been a little over the top, but nothing surprises him these days and if you want to sit and listen, he'll give his side to it all. It'll be bumpy and turbulent and you can leave now if you like, but he promises a gentle landing.

And then he's happy to sit and listen. He knows what's coming. The great tsunami of backlash. The great drop from the sky. A winter in the stockades. Fair enough.

"I'm having my say. I'm nearly done having my say. And then Mick will have his, and other people. I'm sure Mick will say I was a right prick to deal with. In time he will. He'll have his say and I'll have to accept that. I'm happy to put it to bed now and let Mick and the players get on with it. I'll get on with my career."

He's mellow today. He arrives as usual without any bouquet of PR posers, no battalion of media flunkies, just walks in and sits down and starts talking about anything you want him to talk about. He's selling a book, of course, but he doesn't have to sell it. Every print run will vanish quicker than the trees can be chopped to print them on. He's talking because he wants to explain.

Q. Don't you regret that you'll never be 30 again, going to the World Cup as one of the great players?

A. "Honestly I feel relaxed about it now. Sometimes I think I should feel that way, but I had come to the end of my tether. There's things in the book and things I've said regarding all the different things that were bothering me. They sound small if you take them in isolation but it boiled down to the fact that it wasn't working for me. I couldn't go on. I'm sure Mick would say the same. It just wasn't happening for us. People say I should have stayed for the sake of the country. It's different, though, when you're dealing with somebody every day. I wasn't on the same wavelength.

"We just weren't heading the right direction. We pretended. Mick tried hard. To manage is hard and you are not going to please everybody but it just wasn't happening. Even going back to the days when we were playing. We tried. He tried as hard as me. And I did try. It was just coming to a head. It was the timing on the eve of the World Cup, that made it all so bad."

He has mellowed about it but aspects still hurt him. Players coming out and having a slice of him should know that it's not appreciated. Tony Cascarino and Denis Irwin have had a lot to say. It's not their business, he says, they should keep their mouths shut. Touch certain points and he's still bruised. Touch other areas and his claws come out.

Q. Was it just Mick. You've given the impression that Ian Evan's wasn't a favourite either?

A. "Taff hasn't been mentioned much. I can't remember ever enjoying a training session with him. That's not sour grapes. I mean it. That's why I used to come over as late as I could, apart from the fact that I'd be getting what I considered proper treatment over in Manchester, and to be fair, Mick was understanding about that, especially when we had the free weekends and he would get the lads in quite early.

"The times I spoke to Taff, he never spoke to me. The only time he'd speak to me was when he was looking for autographs. I'd say you're allowed have a conversation with me, but it was always either getting the autograph or making snide comments. He didn't help. Even in the room in Saipan when I was having my blow out with Mick he was in the background and I'm looking at him thinking you're fucking next. It never got around to that though."

Q. And the friendships?

A. "Friendships. Yeah. They're not really regrets, but on the other hand I had good times with those lads, Niall, Stan, Kells. I wouldn't try to blame them for anything. The problem was me and Mick, and probably Ian Evans too, but in my gut I still feel they shouldn't have gone to that press conference. I feel they shouldn't have done that to me. They are entitled to their opinion. I understand they had to stick by Mick, but I don't think they had to go and sit there, especially Stan and his "disbelief".

"You didn't have to go there lads. Again, though, I want to put that to bed. I've had some good times with them and they are pretty decent lads, but I still remember that like yesterday. And I remember the next morning when they were leaving too. Listen, before you say I brought all this on myself, I know that. I'm responsible for my own actions.

"I'm responsible for my part but I know if it was the other way around, I know what I would do for a player. I remember with Sparky (Mark Kennedy) and Babbsy (Phil Babb) when they got put out. That's where team-mates defend a player. That morning when they left Saipan, I remember sitting there thinking they mustn't think that highly of me if not one of them came to knock on my door, nobody could come and say "seeya Roy, all the best, have a safe trip or have a long trip". I'm sure I would have done it for somebody else.

"Mick Byrne knocked. That's all. I know Johnny Fallon, the kitman, for years, Tony, the security man. Packie. I could hear it all out in the corridor. I was in the second last room along. Things like that hurt you. You come home and say this was the issue or that was the issue but these other things confirm for you that there is no going back."

Surprisingly, he feels that there was a way back in the 12 hours after the disastrous meeting. He still insists he was set up. Several times he noticed Mick McCarthy and Ian Evans watching him when he was on the beach that day and when the team sat down for their meal at 6.30, there were no staff members present. Since the time when he was an under-15 player for Ireland, he says he can't remember that happening. They dangled the carrot, he says, and he ate their hand off.

Q. When you left the room was that the end for you? Was there a way back?

A. "If Mick had knocked on the door that night or next morning, yeah, probably there was a way back. Just to say that things got messy, we all made mistakes here. I know it took two to tango. I'm not going to say Mick is 100 per cent to blame. It's easy for me to sit here and say the set up was crap, I understand that a lot of it was done through the FAI, I'm just saying the manager has to get the ball rolling. If he had come I'm sure there would have been a way. It was a long night. It was long for me. It must have been long for him. There was a cooling off period before they left. It's not like we had the row at half-seven and they left at eight.

"The press conference threw everything, though. I couldn't understand, time-wise, how they had it even. By the time they had it and some players came to my room, they'd had a press conference. That shocked me.

That morning, when the team left Saipan, the longest day of his life began. His flight off the island wasn't till half-four in the afternoon. The morning dragged horribly. He rang the front desk of the Saipan Hyatt at noon and asked if he could book a taxi for about 2.30. The hotel manager told him that there was a handful of media camped out waiting for him.

He thought that he might as well face them, they weren't going to go away, but the manager sent up chicken and chips and said he'd organise a lift to the airport. A credit card machine was sent up to help him pay his massive phone bill. When Roy Keane finally went down stairs, he thought maybe he'd speak to the press but the hotel had a car waiting out the back.

He gave all his Irish Umbro gear to the cleaners. His World Cup suit. Tons of Umbro T-shirts.

"I said to them to take them. I left quite a bit there. No point in bringing them back. Left my shoes there with the Irish flag on the back. I'd say somebody is playing football in them, only there's no football pitches in Saipan."

Michael Kennedy met him in the British Midland lounge at Heathrow when he got back. Keane was waiting for the half-seven morning shuttle. Kennedy said he'd come up to Manchester with him. He said there was a lot of press up there. So Keane said, "Michael, what are you going to do, make them disappear?"

Kennedy told Keane there had been gossip on the Internet about his private life. A woman had been ringing Theresa, Keane's wife. So he rang Theresa straight away and she said it was nothing, everything was fine.

"You're not going back to the World Cup are you?" said Michael Kennedy.

"I don't think so," said Keane.

Kennedy told Keane he needed to maybe say something.

"I hadn't really understood how big it was. He said I should give my side and then (laughs), the way Michael works he got a deal out of the Daily Mail. He said it was to make up for what I was losing out on in the World Cup through Diadora, etc. That wasn't the issue but that's the way he works. He always looks after me."

The Tommie Gorman interview on RTÉ he dismisses as a red herring overfed with hype. Michael Kennedy was keen for him to do a television piece explaining his side of things. RTÉ were chosen.

Rumours ran around Izumo and other parts that Keane was going on television to apologise, that some deal had been brokered, and as soon as the words fell from his mouth he would be whisked away and put onto a plane on his way to a happy reunion.

Q. How close did you come to turning around and going back to Japan?

A. "I don't think I was ever really going back. I think looking back that was a waste of everyone's time. Michael said "go on television and let people know how you feel", but getting interviewed is artificial. It's 36 minutes long and they were saying "can we cut this bit out?". They thought I shouldn't say that stuff about Niall Quinn, or whatever, I said "use it all".

"Nah, there was never anything going to happen from the interview. I think he (Tommie Gorman) was desperate for me to go back. He was talking about the troubles in the North and all that. I don't know if they were trying to instigate an apology or to open a door. It never got to that stage. It was never going to. I wasn't going to be apologising for anything.

The small things which weighed on him needed explaining then. He feels now it's harder and harder to articulate them. The rumours that the News of the World was about to stitch him up with a story about his private life was, he says, among the least of his problems. He thinks he might have confused the issue by saying to Mick McCarthy in Saipan that his discontent was down to personal problems.

"I just said that because Mick wanted to know what to tell the press. He's obsessed with the press. I should have just said "I've had enough" and faced the music from that side."

He has cooled a little on the subject of Mick McCarthy, but when he lets his mind wander back, when he starts thinking about it, the same old irritants crop up. They were never a mix, never a match. The time together on Saipan just confirmed each man's view of the other.

Keane, as a senior player and captain of Manchester United, expected to be consulted on an almost daily basis on matters to do with the team. He felt ignored and slighted, mostly. He's sure Mick McCarthy just viewed him as a thorny bastard. That's fine. There was little love, so there is little hurt.

He confirms the detail of a little circulated story about one night in the airport hotel when a row broke out between some friends of Gary Breen's and a party being entertained by Roy Keane.

"If I went into detail about every incident like that there'd be no book left."

But when McCarthy came out into the corridor, you told him to go back into his room?

"Yeah, yeah. I did to be fair and I apologised the next time. The next match was against Wales. I apologised. There was drink involved. Not that drink is an excuse."

Q. What was it about the relationship that meant you couldn't stick it a few more weeks?

A. I remember Mick getting up on the stage at the barbeque in Saipan and he gave the lad who was hosting it a bit of stick about wearing a wig and I was just thinking, I cannot imagine any other international manager in the world doing that. Thanks for the night and then an insult about his hair.

"I saw him one night on I Think It's All Over with Gary Lineker and I'm not trying to run anyone's life here, but he's on about eating hairy burgers and all this, and I'm shaking my head, "Mick, Mick, Mick. You're the Irish manager".

"People think I'm an awkward customer. I played with Rockmount for nine years and never had a problem with anybody at Rockmount. I had a year at Cobh, no problem. Nottingham Forest. Brian Clough, who is fairly strict, he and I had our moments, but ask Liam O'Kane, Archie Gemmill and, hopefully, they'll say I was never a problem training. To Manchester United. Kiddo, Steve McClaren, all these people. It's just the Irish set-up. I'm actually not the awkward bastard people think I am.

"I was hoping that Mick and Ian Evans would pull something out of the bag in Saipan, that they'd do something which would make it more enjoyable or more interesting. The first training session we did this shooting routine with Ian Evans, like we always do. And you were getting a shot every 15 minutes. Normal coaches would have four goals to halve the time. I'd love to know where they got their coaching badges and close it down.

"I always thought the whole system was wrong. I'd come in on the Monday evening for midweek games and the lads would be going to the pictures on the Monday night. They'd be saying "hey, you missed a good one yesterday, two and a half hours of a session we did." They'd have played on Saturday and the day after should be a day of loosening and stretching and a Jacuzzi, or something. It was the same with flying to Saipan the day after the Nigeria game. Twenty-three hours, three different planes, after playing an international match.

"When I think of that stuff it's all confirmed it to me. I'd come in on the

Monday and enjoy the picture and the diet coke and the popcorn and the Minstrels. That was the highlight of my international weeks under Mick. And the games. I enjoyed the games. I'll miss the games. I'll miss next week. Not the travelling and that chaos. Probably I'll watch it.

"I won't miss being treated like a child. I used to come over on a Monday night and as I say we'd go to the pictures every Monday. I enjoy the pictures, they were the highlight of my international week. But this one night I was knackered. I told Mick Byrne I was knackered. "Okay," he says. Two minutes later he came back. Mick McCarthy is upstairs, he says all the players have to go, everyone is on the bus. I'm feeling apologetic all of a sudden. Two minutes later Mick Byrne is back. "If you don't go to the pictures nobody is allowed go". I had to go. In my late twenties and not allowed to decide if I'm tired or not."

Through his account of the whole affair, it strikes one that given the failings of the two central characters, some buffer, some authoritive figure who could act as a court of appeal or a go-between was needed on hand. The FAI? The FAI he describes as "just a shambles".

Since he was involved with Irish teams from under-15s, 16s, youths, under-21s and senior, he hasn't found a better word for them. Shambles.

"Mick said it was the most difficult week in his career. It

was a walk in the park compared to what I had to put up with. Not just for

one week.

For the whole summer."

In the matter of Saipan and what happened afterward he found them so irrelevant as to be part of a different, unexplored galaxy. He is surprised to even be asked if they had any part in things. Being honest he doesn't even know any of their names.

They are a vague, gassy blur somewhere off in the distance. "I know people in League of Ireland clubs and they say the same. They are shocking. They have a chief executive now, I think, but it's amateurs trying to run professionals. I haven't had any personal contact with them since the meeting in Saipan. Not one. They might have rung Michael to find out what was happening, I don't know. They weren't part of it.

"I don't expect for us to get what England players get, they have hundreds of millions, I appreciate that, but it's not the team's fault that the FAI are blowing six or seven million on a study for a stadium that'll never be built. We are punished in daft little ways. They wouldn't bring our wives to the World Cup. Eventually we got four free tickets after an argument. Football has made me a wealthy man, I'm not bitching over the money, I'm just talking about doing it properly.

"It's just crazy. I've seen them boozing up with players in Cyprus. I've seen them all over the world sitting in the first-class seats. An FAI official came to my room in Dublin before an important game and he was pissed, asking for an autograph. Eleven at night. I won't give his name, but he was steaming. Is that acceptable? Tell me I'm wrong if it is."

Still with us? There's the drink to be dealt with. He feels, too, that he has been misrepresented in terms of his views of other players' drinking habits. When he could do it, he was as guilty as anyone, he says. Under Jack, he'd come in on a Sunday night and just get wrecked. He'd be out on the town and he'd arrive in at half-past six or seven in the morning. Train in the afternoon on Monday. Sleep most of the day Tuesday and play on Wednesday. Usually get something out of it .

That was years ago, though. Times have to change, he thinks. He gave up because his injuries couldn't bear the burning which was being done at both ends of the candle. And he couldn't bear the trouble he was getting into. He misses it like a hole in the head, he says.

The drinking in Saipan didn't bother him, though. "People would say I'm a fine one to talk. The next day at training in the heat the lads were dying. I got a laugh out of that, the stories and the hangovers. That wasn't a problem."

Nor did it ever cross his mind not to go to Saipan, to just skip it and join the team later. He thinks that because he'd had leeway over the years, he felt he should go to Saipan. He knew that the leeway he got on other issues must have played on the other players' minds. They'd have the odd laugh, the odd tease about it, but he knew it was there. The resentment about him coming in on a Monday for a Wednesday game. He decided it was out of the question to be coming a week late for the World Cup.

"I wanted us all to go together. I thought fundamentally it would all be sound. We got there, the pitch, the gear, it all snowballed."

And he appreciates that perhaps there were other people besides him feeling an undercurrent from the Niall Quinn testimonial incident. Of all the fallout, the disagreement with other players seems to bother him the most and hurt him the most.

Q. Do you regret saying what you did about some players?

A. "In hindsight, I've had a few harsh words to say about Stan and Quinny and Kells, it must have been hard for them, to be fair."

Q. Do you regret calling them cowards?

A. "No. I think they were. They should have said to Mick that the problem was between him and me. Nothing to do with players. Steve Staunton shaking his head like Stan's never given anyone dog's abuse?"

Q. So what do you regret?

A. "Ah, I suppose I do regret it. I think it was unfair for the players to get involved. I just don't think they should have. Life goes on."

Q. You play against Niall Quinn today. Steve Staunton in a few weeks. Will you talk to them?

A. "Probably not. I'm sure they won't want to talk to me. It doesn't mean that I've got a problem with them. It all got really messy, didn't it? From everyone's point of view. They hurt me. They really did hurt me. I felt hurt after it. I still do.

"Afterwards, that statement that went out, even though it wasn't supposed to, but it did go out. I'm at home watching Sky and the players have signed the statement. I genuinely believe that's what they wanted. I felt that they might have been better off without me and I have to accept that."

Q. Does it make a difference that they'd talked Mick around?

A. "It was as confusing for me as it was for anyone else. It was a shambles. The whole lot of it was a shambles. The time difference didn't help. I'm getting this and that back. I couldn't go back. Not after the injury accusation. They were saying if I apologised. I couldn't get my head 'round that. I wouldn't go back on that basis. If we'd said let bygones be bygones, maybe.

"And all the stuff after I left. I turn on the telly and Quinny is on giving his press conference. He's telling everyone what a week he has had. I'm at home now and I'm saying to the telly, "what a week you've had Quinny?" He says he shouted at Gillian and then he wiped his face and said he was shattered. He's been staring at the ceiling. And Damien Duff said (adopts slow mournful voice) "Is This What the World Cup is About?"

"Well, I'm at home, there's stuff about my personal life on the Internet, I'm supposedly sleeping with more women than I could dream of, I've got dozens of women pregnant, apparently, in Dublin of all places! I have to be careful there at the best of times! I couldn't leave the house. My Mam and Dad were in a caravan we have. They were in hiding, but some of the local media scumbags got there, banging on my mother's caravan. "Right Mossie, can you come out and say something?"

"And Quinny was having a hard time because he had a go at Gillian? Mick said it was the most difficult week in his career. It was a walk in the park compared to what I had to put up with. Not just for one week. For the whole summer. It's calmed down a bit now, but there's still that booing at matches, which (laughs) okay, they'd do anyway, but lads, it was no walk in the park."

He watched the World Cup in distracted, fitful moments. He is reluctant to criticise the on-the-pitch performances, partly because he saw so little of them, and partly out of loyalty. The team played nice football. He feels, though, that the celebration in the park must have been an embarrassment for some of his old colleagues when they analysed it in terms of results. He still aches about the Spain game,

Q. Was it hard to look at the World Cup?

A. "The games? I watched the penalty shoot-out against Spain thinking I should be there. As a player, you like to think you would have helped, ask any player they think they could give that bit extra to the team. I think I could have and would have.

"The biggest relief in a funny sense was the team getting knocked out. There wasn't any satisfaction in it, I was sorry for the lads, but every game the press were outside. I'd pass and they'd say "what's it like for them to have qualified without you?"

"I bit my tongue. The morning of the Spain match there was a big crowd of them. I went out and got back for about the last 20 minutes of normal time. Say the extra time and the penalties. I came out later that afternoon to walk the dog and it was amazing, the street was dead. No story any more. The story was that they were doing well without me, and they were, to be fair. Then it was finished.

"It was like that scene from The General when Martin Cahill comes out on the morning he was shot and there's absolutely nobody there. I'm looking around wondering if there's somebody in the bushes, waiting for me. There's a part of me saying "thank God that's over". I was upset for some of the players because we were so close. On the other hand we should have won. They were gone when I saw it, gone mentally, usual Spanish scenario. They were a shambles, they were there for the taking, 10 men for half an hour. Go kill the game."

So life goes on. He hopes it will return to some form of tranquillity soon. He's happy that his kids are too young to understand it all and the rest of his family have got through it. He's made mistakes, he thinks, and as the heat goes out of the situation he sees them more clearly.

He'll miss stuff. When he thinks about what he'll miss it sets him off again.

"The atmosphere for a big game in Lansdowne is the best I've ever played in. Better than the World Cup, better than big nights at Old Trafford, big European nights, it's just brilliant. Holland and Portugal. Those games were better than any other matches I've ever played in. Are we asking too much to repay the fans by doing things right?

The aftermath will linger, of course. Other books to come. The FA and possible legal cases hanging over him in England. He's found a strange calm in the middle of it.

"If I have to answer the FA I will. If I have to go to court I will. My attitude is like "relax everybody". Myself first of all. It's only a book."

You ask about Alf Inge Haaland. He says it's with Michael Kennedy. He has confidence there. He reminds you that Haaland played on that day, that his other leg has kept him out of fooball. There's a difference between hurting and injuring, he says. A difference that every footballer knows.

"Listen, I'm playing Sunderland this weekend. I want to hit them hard. They want to hit me hard. There's a difference between that and wanting to injure them.

"I've played professionally for 13 years now. I've been involved in two tackles where players have been injured and taken off. Once, at Forest, against Nigel Winterburn. I got the free. Once, for United, against Dennis Wise. He jumped in late. I got the free again. I get hurt every week. I play in the middle of the park as a ball-winner. People want to hurt me. I want to hurt them. It's not the same as wanting to injure them or end their career. People need to chill out."

And Roy Keane. Is he chilled at last?

"Listen," he says, "it's all done now. Everyone has to take their blame right along the line. Me. Mick. The FAI. Maybe it would be unfair to blame the players, but the rest of us have to stand up."

He's done. No foam around the mouth. No vein throbbing in his temple. That wasn't too frightening, was it? Glad you stayed?

"Gotta go," he says, and flashes a rueful smile full of hard-earned wisdom.