James Lawton: Keane's sword of truth looks blunt and coarse despite moral lecture

Manchester United captain's 'honesty' over revelations about Haaland tackle is undermined by refusal to identify dressing-room shirkers

Mr David Walsh, a much lauded sportswriter of The Sunday Times, has come down from the mountain-top and smashed stones on the heads of those misguided enough not to see in the outpourings of Roy Keane the altruistic wielding of a gleaming sword of truth.

Where we have gone wrong, and committed our fundamental act of "dishonesty", is making judgements not on any reading of the book, which is not yet available, but on the serialisation which has dominated the sports pages for more than a week and enriched Keane by as much as £300,000.

Walsh explains how serialisation works, so stop trying to look up Sally Jones' skirt, sit still and pay attention.

"When newspapers pay for serialisation," he writes, "they buy the right to sensationalise. What they print is often a distortion of the book they purport to reflect. Journalists who judge books based on reading serialisations commit an act of blatant and shameless dishonesty. But that has never stopped them before and neither has it in this case.

"Neither was it coincidental that intelligence on the issue of Keane's book should not have come from a sportswriter but a footballer. Asked for his views, Gary Neville said: 'I will not comment until I have read it, which I plan to do at the earliest opportunity. I prefer to read the whole book than rely purely on the serialisation because I know from experience how certain chapters can be distorted in short form.' What, you may wonder, is the problem with our [journalistic] profession? Honesty is our difficulty." At this early point you may wish to pinch yourself, but the lesson has scarcely begun.

The fact that nothing that appeared in The Times or the News of the World, the sickeningly gloating account of taking cold revenge against the despised Alf Inge Haaland, the barrage of asterisks, the depicting of the FA Cup as a load of "bollocks", the sneering at Jack Charlton, the endorsement of Eric Cantona's kung-fu attack on a "looper" of a fan, the absolute sense of a man subject to the restraint of only one judgement, his own, can possibly be contradicted in a tome which, however impressive its sale, will be read only by a fraction of those who have followed the newspaper instalments, is apparently of no account.

Walsh tells us: "Anyone with a scintilla of sense would read this book before judging it." Heaven forbid, but he may have missed the point. What have been crowding the sports pages, at least those outside of the Murdoch empire, and the sportscasts have not been book reviews. They have been reactions to the unvarnished, and hugely rewarded, statements of a celebrity footballer who, like anyone who sells his memoirs to a newspaper, knows, unless he is a half-wit, that the pay comes in direct proportion to the amount of controversy and attention they will generate.

As it happens, I don't hold much of a brief for Haaland, whose demeanour on the field invariably suggested more a source of petty aggravation than warrior instinct, and still less of his and Manchester City's plan to sue Keane following the latter's unequivocal statement that the appalling tackle he committed had its origins several years before. Nor are the warnings of heavy discipline from the Football Association too impressive. Rather than responding to macho boasts it would be better developing a disciplinary system which could draw a line between fouls which were professional and those as diabolical as the one Keane unleashed.

There is also, unquestionably, powerful grounds to say that, aside from the extremities of his nature, and his apparent intolerance of much of the rest of humanity, there is a lot to commend Keane as an arbiter of football values. His commitment to Manchester United and Ireland on the field has been exceptional. Outside of the Haaland incident, the instances of Keane initiating violence on the field are rare indeed.

His weakness is his ability to control his reactions to that which he considers cheap and unworthy of the battle. Haaland's offence, in his eyes, was not violent tackling but insulting talk. None of this, however, and despite the strictures of Mr Walsh, does much to dislodge the belief that Keane, in both his behaviour in walking out on the Irish team before the World Cup and the violence and coarseness of his approved serialisation, has stepped beyond a reasonable mark.

Walsh tells us that Keane has long wanted to tell it as it is. "In his book," he writes, "Keane speaks of the United dressing-room after they had lost to Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions' League last season. He writes: 'I looked around. It wasn't hurting some of them enough. Laurent [Blanc] was sitting there gutted. I felt sorry for Seba [Veron]. Cost £28 million, became the scapegoat for our season. Some of the others were getting away with murder. Blame Seba. Too easy. Wrong. Glory, believing the publicity has cost us. Rolex, garages full of cars, ****ing mansions, set up for life, forgot about the game, lost the hunger that got you the Rolex, the cars, the mansion.' That paragraph was quoted in the serialisation. How could those who write about football see that and not sense the attempt to get to the heart of things?"

Unlike Mr Walsh, I cannot speak for all my colleagues, but the suspicion would be that it was not all that difficult.

Not when that sword of truth became blunt to the point of not naming the names that might cause a little too much unpleasantness a little too close to home. Name the martyr Seba, why not, and also the great Laurent. But do not stir up too much grief in your own nest, don't name a few names that might answer back. According to Mr Walsh, honesty, his special subject, makes us uncomfortable, reminds us of how we routinely skirt around the truth but rarely get to it. He writes: "Often we, the sportswriters, work not to reveal things but to conceal our ignorance of them. You think of this and you despair." That just about ends the lesson, except to say that not everyone in the inky fastness of journalism is about to click their heels to Mr Walsh's order. He did not exactly invent morality in journalism, as may have dawned on those of his readers who turned to two of his recent columns only to find themselves knee-deep in the most shameless of puffery.

Both pieces concerned the wonders of a new golf course in the West of Ireland, on which he was invited to play with its designer, Greg Norman. He wrote: "The 14th is extraordinary because the par-three green hangs like a shelf over the Atlantic and though it is just 100 yards long it is nerve-wracking. Sixteen's green is exasperatingly tough and the bunker located in the middle of the green will make you think. What was Norman thinking, a bunker bang in the middle of the green? I kid you not. Yet this is no complaint because apart from those two Open Championships, [this course] may be the Australian's finest achievement. Offered as a fine piece of links land, Norman has done the place justice. Though it is expensive (€180 or £105) it is one of those courses you should aim to play at least once in your life." Preferably, no doubt, on one of those occasional weekends when you put down the heavy sword of truth.