Keane is not the sole culprit in collision of grand egos

It is too simplistic to say that McCarthy had only one option with his captain in fight that became a farce

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Ireland squad tells Keane: Stay at home

McCarthy hints apology could let Keane return

Keane: 'I still want to play in the World Cup'

Keane is not the sole culprit in collision of grand egos

Somewhere in the tortured thinking of the Irish midfield player Roy Keane and his country's manager, Mick McCarthy, something went missing.

It was not pride, heaven knows. They have been like fighting cocks in the matter of keeping face. They have slugged it out in the television studios and in the newspaper columns, and in Keane's case for a profit that would keep a large family in his native Cork in some luxury for several years.

After day long rumours yesterday that a deal was being struck behind the scenes, that Keane would apologise on Irish national television and McCarthy would be presented with a compromise which he could accept, at least for the duration of the World Cup, the nightmare scenario was replayed all over again. Keane said he had nothing to apologise for, he had been talked into his newspaper columns by his agent, and that the rightness of his original decision to walk out on the team had been confirmed by the approval of his family.

How neat for Keane, how good good for the conscience, but at this latest point of self-justification it is surely easy enough to identify that missing element. It is a moment of thought and care for the yearnings of an entire nation. However we may question the validity of the sporting metaphor when applied to the realities of life, we know for a livid fact that a light went out in the spirit of Ireland when Keane stormed away from the World Cup camp.

No doubt the wound will heal soon enough, but for the moment it is angry and Keane's television appearance can only have served as a shovel-full of salt. Keane said that playing in the World Cup was the biggest thing, but he gave McCarthy no room to move. Certainly no more than McCarthy had given him when he first erupted so angrily last week.

Both men have ferociously defended their own position, and no doubt conventional wisdom would insist that McCarthy, if he was to continue as manager of the team, had no option but to follow such a course. It is true – but only to a point. Keane's anger had triggered the crisis but it was not its only cause, and it is why there is a such a split in the reaction of the Irish people. McCarthy was plainly the winner of the publicity battle before Keane stomped into view of the cameras again yesterday, but it is idle to pretend that the player can comfortably assigned all blame.

What inflamed him so catastrophically that hot morning on the training field? What sent the water bottle crashing to the ground? It was not, even the worst of critics would have to concede, entirely the arrogance of one great but troubled player.

It was also about the frustration of a superb professional who had done, the most casual observer of Ireland's march to these World Cup finals could confirm, more than anyone around him, who went to work seriously and found something out of his worst dream.

A training field so hard it threatened fresh aggravation to the injuries he had carried without flinching for most of the season. A chaos of organisation which left the training kit in the team hotel. A bitter sense that some of his late-drinking colleagues might be less focused on the challenge than himself.

His complaints have been well aired, of course, and none of them excuse the extremity of his reaction. But, if they are not an excuse, they are a reason which may well resonate among some of those Irish fans so sickened by the loss of their team's most striking asset. In a football age of huge rewards and sometimes questionable commitment, Keane's explosion is bound to draw a little sympathy.

He was not caught in a night-club at 3am. He was apprehended on a training field that he considered an insult, raising a fist at standards which he long ago left in the slipstream of a phenomenal career.

That was certainly the case for the defence when Keane spoke to the nation at the eleventh hour. But, if Keane so violently deplores certain trends in the game he has made his personal battleground, he simply wallows in the fashionable principle that, whatever attitude you strike, whatever cause you argue, you do it on your own behalf.

That is all it came down to when Keane went before the television cameras last night. If the player must face the consequences of that, McCarthy himself cannot be too sanguine about his fate over the next few weeks.

When Ireland face Cameroon in their opening match they have to deal with a team of potential brilliance who have lost just one game of their last 17, which include the winning of the African Nations' Cup. Their German coach, Winfried Schäfer, has created the sense of a team, and England felt the force of it in Japan last weekend when they struggled to salvage a draw. And the Irish have to do it without their one world-class player. McCarthy will say so be it, but did it really have to be?

It is a little too simplistic to say that the coach had only one course to follow. Could he have been a little more placatory at the outset, did he have to make the issue one between Roy Keane and himself and the rest of the squad, many of whom had reason to feel grateful to their coach for their presence on that foreign field? Was it enough to put Keane in his place and keep him there? There will be no quick verdict in the jury room of Irish public opinion, and really it is hard to see how there could be. Ultimately, Keane shaped the crisis and he has now shown little inclination to break it down.

He told Ireland that his conscience was clear and all the backroom deals that have ever made across the length and breadth of his native land could offer no easy way out.

As Keane proclaimed his innocence, as McCarthy no doubt waited to further shore up his position, you could see more clearly than ever that this not a battle of conscience but ego and pride.

It meant that now any breaking of the deadlock, any fudging of the issues between Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy, would constitute a farce. Together they travelled a short but bitter road of anger and pride and intransigence. It has made for the mother of football controversies, but it has left the team to whom they were both supposed to be committed a raggedy orphan indeed.

It would have taken a big man to give an inch, and maybe Keane and McCarthy will one day get round to reflecting upon that. But all the signs are that the World Cup of 2002 will be long gone by then. It may also occur to them that it can never be brought back.