Roy Keane is the new Sinead O'Connor (World Cup 2002 - the build up)

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Product:	World Cup 2002 - the build up
Date:	30/05/02 (10 review reads)
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Whatever the reason for Roy Keane's Taz-style behaviour over the past few days (and, let's be honest, the great man has actually been acting strangely for some months now), there can be no question that he has put himself into a very tricky position with relation to his three or so million fellow countrymen and women.
 
Ireland is very passionate about its football. And about its status as a go-ahead, thrusting nation. And these two things, perhaps worryingly for Roy Keane, are linked.

The relative success of the team over the past couple of decades is seen by some as a reflection of the nation's emergence from beneath the yoke of cultural timidity and economic weakness that were the bequest of the departing Brits. Anyone who threatens to undermine that link, and to make Ireland appear a bunch of ass in the eyes of a watching world, is liable to become Public Enemy Uimhir A Haoin (that's Gaelic, buster) and pretty damn pronto (that's Italian) too.
 
So you could reasonably expect that, as soon as he next touches down on Irish soil, Keano will be confronted by the braver elements of the local populace and told, in no uncertain terms that he is, to quote himself, a f*****g w****r. And it's not a label that is likely to go away any time quick. There is no nation on earth more adept at keeping alive old wounds and grudges than the Irish.
 
And yet there is something going on in Ireland that means that it's possible that Keane will largely get away with his antics. Or, at the very least, only endure the wrath of half the country. The downside for him, if he cares, is that he will have to spend the rest of his life associated with Sinead O'Connor, Father Ted and Daniel O'Donnell.
 
Let me explain. There is a battle going on in Ireland. It is a battle for the heart and soul of the nation. I know about it because my parents and half my siblings live there. Hence I spend loads of time there and the
emotional tug-o-war is all too clear.
 
At one end of the rope you have those who wish to hang on in some way to Ireland As She Was. These are the people who liked the Ireland of the immediate post-War period; poor but happy, a simple land that rejoiced in the rural, easy-paced face it presented to the world. It was the world of raven-haired colleens in Arran sweaters, pints of foaming Guinness, jaunting cars, jovial priests and John Wayne in The Quiet Man.

Of course (just like Morrissey's black and white Fifties England), it was a place that never really existed, and totally ignored the tragedy of mass economic migration, the very thing that resulted in my sorry carcass being born in Kilburn rather than Kilkenny. But the fact remains that it is a place, a time and an atmosphere that many Irish people long for, and wish to protect.
 
At the other extremity of the hemp there is the modern Ireland, the Ireland that likes to go under the slightly fanciful title of The Celtic Tiger. This is the young, lively country, freed (by its close ties with the EC, source of much of its new wealth) from the need to constantly measure itself against Britain, a hothouse of cultural activity and economic achievement.

To the folk who promote this version of the country, much of the trappings of Ye Olde Hibernia is anathema. They want realism over romance, effort over effervescence, credibility over craic.
 
Hence are the lines drawn in Ireland, and each big news story tends to polarise the society. At the stern end of things, the regular arguments about abortion cause this fault line to appear. Less seriously, people tend to take sides over their cultural icons.

The conservatives, for instance, love a jumper-wearing, blow-dried singer of sentimental songs called Daniel O'Donnell. Daniel is not the sort of lad a girl could take home to meet her parents; they would find him too wimpy. Yet he represents something about old Irel
and and is adored by his fans. The New Irelanders find him at best an irrelevance, at worst an embarrassment.
 
Equally divisive are Sinead O'Connor (perhaps before she went slightly crackers and declared herself Holy Roman Emperor) and Father Ted. Icons of a young, past-rejecting nation to some, the devil incarnate to others.
 
Enter Keano. His publicly-stated beefs (that the FAI is amateurish, that his teammates are more interested in having a laugh than seriously training to win - yes, win! - the World Cup, that Mick McCarthy concentrates on team spirit at the expense of technical training) go straight to heart of the argument.
 
A great many Irish people have enjoyed their country's international adventures without ever harbouring the notion that Ireland were actually becoming a world power. They loved the underdog efforts of their boys and were genuinely proud - and often genuinely inebriated - when the inevitable footballing reality eventually kicked in.

For the Celtic Tiger gang, this was never enough. This kind of grinning acceptance that it's a bit of a laugh, an excuse for a party, was a source of pain.
 
Thus it is that Roy Keane may not face the wrath of an entire nation scorned. There will still be plenty who find his extreme professionalism tiresome, self-indulgent, selfish even.

But for each of those there will be others who adopt him a patron saint of the new, determined, forceful Ireland.

Neither role is one that is likely to improve the mood of Mr Grumpy. In Roy's mind he probably has more in common even with the Old Trafford prawn-munchers than he does with the baldy crooner of Nothing Compares To U?

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