By mid-afternoon yesterday, you had a notion that the staff at Tesco in Burnage, in the suburbs of Manchester, were nervously watching the door every time it opened for fear the Republic of Ireland assistant manager would march in, seeking a word or six, like: “Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.”
That's been Roy Keane's life's maxim, so you'd assume he'd have regarded yesterday's Tesco mishap as the mother, father, granny and grandad of all failures. This Thursday at the RDS in Dublin was to be the Big Launch of the Cork man's latest autobiography, The Second Half, the co-author of the first, Eamon Dunphy, having been put on the transfer list, replaced in the two-man line-up by Roddy Doyle.
They even started selling tickets for the event a month ago – all 3,500 of them – at €40 a shot, Keane’s decision not to accept (presumably highly lucrative) offers to serialise the book in British or Irish newspapers, making its contents the footballing equivalent of the Third Secret of Fatima.
And then what happens? Tesco in Burnage miss the memo, and place the book on their shelves yesterday. And before a single one of the tomes could say, “Take me back!”, it was being serialised on Twitter. For free. There were cynics who suggested this wasn’t an accident at all, alleging it was a publicity thing – as if, like.
But by teatime, if you’d rounded up all the tweeted extracts you’d have had the bulk of the book. So, as business models go, it didn’t make a heap of sense.
So, how juicy is it? Very. But that’s not the biggest of surprises, Keane’s Republic of Ireland gaffer Martin O’Neill forecasting recently it would “probably cause some sort of consternation”, it being Roy Keane, and all.
Revelations
The main revelations? You already know the gist – that his departure from Manchester United wasn’t entirely cordial, Alex Ferguson telling him he was tearing up his contract after his captain’s heated run-in with the manager’s assistant, Carlos Queiroz. During which Keane said to the Portuguese chap, who insisted “repetition” was key in training, “Carlos, do you always make love to your wife in the same position?”
Smokes of the holy kind. And when Ferguson told Keane his Theatre of Dreams’ days were done? “I just thought, ‘****ing p***k.” (At this point you picture Roddy saying to Roy, “Could you cut down on the expletives a bit, my readers will be offended. Thanks.”)
What else? Lots. Like the time he had a punch-up with Peter Schmeichel on the 27th floor of a Hong Kong hotel, waking Bobby Charlton from his sleep, the knight looking out his bedroom door in time to see Keane’s headbutt leaving the great Dane with a black eye. Good times.
There’s more. Available at a good Twitter feed near you.
