Rockmount moulded Keane, the player – but where can mould Keane, the coach?

THERE’S ONE FAMOUS story in Roy Keane’s first autobiography which best explains how he made it to the professional game and stayed there.

Keane describes 18 February 1990 and the Cobh Ramblers National U18 Cup side’s journey to Fairview Park to play Belvedere. The bus was late and then further delayed in traffic. The team weren’t sure they’d make it in time and got there with minutes to spare.

“We were knackered before we began. Belvedere hammered us 4-0,” Keane said in the book. “It was a fucking cock-up, Mickey fucking Mouse typical Cork, leaving the big boys from Dublin with the handy task which they accomplished in typically arrogant style. If I played like a demented man that day it was because I was one.”

Keane knew the game was gone, but by now we know his view on giving up. “I’d show those Dublin bastards I could fucking play. . . . I was like a man possessed – by that strange compound of anger, frustration and personal pride. That compound can turn games; even the most hopeless situation can be retrieved. But not that day in Fairview.”

Though on the wrong side of the score, Keane was the day’s winner. A Nottingham Forest scout was at the game, Keane ended up at that club, and now almost 33 years later he’s on our screens aghast at the lack of dementedness, the dearth of anger, the stunning lack of frustration and fuck-you defiance from Manchester United players every time they lose another derby to City.

He still has it in spades himself, of course. He may have looked like a cuddly granddad on his short-lived Instagram page, but when it comes to the game that made him famous he’s the same as ever.

Keane refuses to tickle the belly of United supporters, recently telling Off The Ball’s Joe Molloy: “There’s nothing pulling at the heartstrings with any of the clubs I played for saying this is my club and it’s great to be back – far from it. I’ve moved on.”

Despite this outlook, or possibly because he’s so authentic, Keane is still treated like a hero at Old Trafford by the fans. They know what matters; they remember what he did and know how he feels now about current humiliations – the same as they do.

Keane’s tragedy now is that he has no outlet now for the I’ll-show-you fury that fuelled his playing career. He can go on the telly and empty every barrel when United get turned over, but that’s not competition. Somebody like him needs a cause, not a platform.

Links to management jobs come and go, albeit more slowly than before, with West Brom this week being the latest, in the event of his old teammate Steve Bruce getting the sack.

But generally he seems to be an outsider for most jobs which arise. Who would take a punt on a combustible man, who refuses to discuss tactics in anything like the depth with which he understands them, so preoccupied is he with ‘character’?

He’s fallen out with more players than is common during his spells in management and coaching, though has observed that everybody who had a problem with him underachieved in their careers.

He seems high risk and low reward to the various power brokers at clubs. Which is a shame for anybody capable of sympathy. Sure, there are lots of people who deserve our thoughts more than a multi-millionaire sporting legend, still what we’re looking at here is a predator in the zoo.

For his own sake, Keane needs to reintroduce some kind of competitive focus to his life, be that at the elite level of the sport, or somewhere else.

The West Brom job may or may not come to pass. It would be entertaining, certainly, for him to return to the front line and, who knows, he may have learned enough by now to bring something close to the impact on a club as a manager he brought as a player.

Yet many would have reservations. It’s quite likely he would repeat previous mistakes. If he did, would it necessarily be his fault?

The privilege and curse of being a hugely successful player is you get to skip all of the early rungs on the coaching ladder.

Keane has consistently praised the role Rockmount FC played in moulding him as a player, over many years.

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But there was no Rockmount for Keane the coach. The same is true for numerous decorated ex pros who go straight from playing to managing or coaching at a high level.

There will be a club like Rockmount near where Keane lives that would be delighted for him to be involved. It shouldn’t be so outlandish that he would slot into the game at this level and go from there.

With the right education there’s no reason why he couldn’t progress to where he was as a player.

Manchester United’s success of the 1990s and 2000s was built on a lot of things, but crucial in the mix was the driving force of Keane; his setting of a standard and holding others to account.

He was able to do this as a teammate on the pitch or dressing room but has yet to find a way to do so as effectively from a position of management. That’s a matter of training and experience rather than the insurmountable personality flaw it is sometimes made out to be.

There’s nothing wrong with him starting again at a lower level with a view to making it back to the summit as manager one day.

Even if he never made it further than his local grassroots club, then at least he’d know he was still trying, still involved in the competitive sphere rather than being part of the commentariat. Which, to a man of his nature, looks like giving up.