TV View: There she was, our auld, four-legged pal Triggs, back on the telly news on Saturday. While meaning no offence, she strikes us as the kind of dog who would wag her tail at a man she spotted scaling the garden wall in the dead of night, wearing a balaclava and carrying a bag with SWAG emblazoned across it.

While Roy pointed to the line over which the assembled media could not cross, just outside his front gate, Triggs didn't growl menacingly in support of her master; she was too busy greeting the News of the World photographer, RTÉ reporter and Sky News cameraman like they were long-lost friends. Which, in many ways, they are.

"Cripes, is it really three-and-a-half years since I last sniffed ye," she wuffed.

Then she nearly knocked Roy over as all the excitement got to her, tackling him chest-high. Not since Saipan has she been so exposed to the spotlight.

Nor, indeed, exercise. If she were a Premiership midfielder she'd now be in casualty, but Roy just gave her a rub, something Patrick Vieira never enjoyed.

Roy, evidently, loves Triggs, but he must sometimes wonder where her loyalties lie. Although he'd hardly regard her as unfaithful as Alex Ferguson.

If Triggs thought it was only the Irish who got emotional about her master, she should have tuned in to Sky Sport's Jimmy Hill's Sunday Supplement yesterday, recorded around his breakfast table.

The Daily Mirror's Oliver Holt, you should know, is a United fan who has the look of a man who might only recover from Keane's departure after several years of counselling.

"The language used to dress up his departure was the language of the prawn sandwich brigade, corporate rubbish," he spat. "Keane spoke the truth and the management at United can't handle the truth."

Jimmy nigh on choked on his croissant. "You have someone here," he said, "who has been the manager and chairman of more than one club, so I know the difficulty in dealing with something that is an enormous decision."

Oliver's face, a bit like ours, said: "You're having a laugh?"

"Alex's record over the years is absolutely stupendous," said Jimmy, undeterred, "and knowing what it's like to manage you almost get fed up with your own words at times."

"Even you, Jimmy," asked Oliver.

"By chanting his name he had become the totem for the disaffected fans, the regime is in its death throes," said the London Times' Matt Dickenson, but Jimmy rattled on.

"I know I'm going to be asked the question, if I was a manager today would I sign him," he said.

Silence. Nobody asked him, but he answered any way.

On RTÉ 2's The Premiership, Bill O'Herlihy introduced the day's games. "Wigan v Arsenal: Arsene Wenger lost his Roy Keane equivalent during the summer . . . Liverpool v Portsmouth: Anfield was the scene of Keane's last appearance in a United shirt . . ."

It seemed like Roy might have been occupying Billo's thoughts.

Time, then, to chat with Johnny Giles and Liam Brady about, well, you know. There was a bit of the Jimmy "footballers should be seen and not heard" Hills about Brady - "Keane's behaviour has been unprecedented in football . . . never before has a player come out and criticised his own teammates so publicly" - but Gilesie just opted to look at it in an all-feeling, all-compassionate, human being kind of way. Yerra, little wonder we love him so.

"It's just very, very sad to see such a partnership end," he said. "It's a cruel end, even it was inevitable. But in my experience 90 per cent of the great players had brutal endings. I spoke to Ian St John and Roger Hunt in the past and the stories they told about (Bill) Shankly at Liverpool weren't very flattering. You give your great days, and once you're of no use you've got to go. But some managers do it in a more dignified way than others, in a more humane way."

What next for Keane?

"I'd like to see him get the Irish job," said Brady.

If Bill had had a croissant he'd have choked on it. "I'm surprised to hear you say that because that's not the kind of attitude that you've adopted in the past," he said.

"Well," said Brady, "I don't think they should have let him play after what went on in Saipan - but they let him play so they might as well let him manage now."

One slightly got the sense that Brady viewed dealing with the FAI as Keane's ultimate punishment for his past misdemeanours.

In truth, if that job offer scaled Trigg's garden wall in the dead of night, wearing a balaclava and carrying a bag with SWAG emblazoned across it, even she'd bark manically.