Roy Keane Live at the Marquee: ‘I think Paul McGrath could kill the pope and they’d say the pope deserved it’

Pity poor Éanna Hardwicke, the Cork actor charged with playing Roy Maurice Keane in the soon to be released film ‘Saipan’. Why? Because, unlike, say Bob Dylan, nobody plays The Boy Roy better than Roy himself as he proved last night with a polished performance in his native Cork.

A brilliant midfielder in his day, bursting with determination and a fiercely combative, competitive streak, Keane has become the most intriguing football TV pundit in these isles, his mixture of brooding menace and occasional wickedly funny put downs making him TV gold.

Whether by accident or design or maybe because it’s just the way he is, Keane has cornered the market in old school grump, his no-nonsense approach to calling out modern day fancy dan figaries, ensuring he is the go-to-guy at half time for an opinion on a player or a performance.

[ Roy Keane’s life has had many twists and turns, but his love for Cork never waveredOpens in new window ]

But enough of the pre-review warm up – last night Roy returned to Leeside for the second of three Live at the Marquee shows and the huge crowd proved the veracity of Oscar winner, Cillian Murphy’s statement “that no one will be more famous than Roy Keane coming out of Cork”.

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Unlike his appearance with Tommy Tiernan on RTÉ television in 2023 when he wore a permanently querulous “Are you off your f**king chuck?” frown, particularly when Tiernan went full Freud asking about father figures, Keane was last night the epitome of chill.

It helped that his interviewer, his most recent biographer, Roddy Doyle was more focused on football than psychology and Keane delivered a fine first half performance sailing through his career from Rockmount to Cobh Ramblers to Nottingham Forest to Manchester Utd to Celtic.

En route we were treated to some familiar themes – how lucky he was to find himself in good dressingrooms with senior players serving as role models with the likes of Stuart Pearce, Paul McGrath, Bryan Robson and Eric Cantona among those name-checked along the way.

Roddy Doyle and Roy Keane clearly get on well and they played a lovely series of neat exchanges midway through the first half. Photograph: John Allen

We also heard him sing the praises of Brian Clough and to a lesser extent Alex Ferguson while he also told a hilarious tale about how he spent a holiday in Ayia Napa looking over his shoulder after Kenny Daglish threatened to find him when he reneged on a handshake to sign for Blackburn.

Doyle and Keane clearly get on well and they played a lovely series of neat exchanges midway through the first half where Doyle teed him up perfectly by mentioning how his mother’s cousin was a US Marine who fought in the Pacific in the second World War II, including at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

“Where’s this going?” asked Keane. “Saipan,” shot back Doyle. We then got Keano’s take on the whole debacle with Mick McCarthy and the preparations for the 2002 World Cup which concluded with Keano revealing that he “hadn’t lost a wink of sleep over it”.

The second half was perhaps a more perfunctory affair where Roy could be accused of coasting as he named the best XI that he ever played with and the best XI he played against with his selection of Paul McGrath and Denis Irwin in the former earning loud applause.

Irwin was flawless – “apart from coming for the Southside” while everyone loved McGrath given all the trials he had been through. “I think Paul could kill the pope and people would forgive him – everyone loves Paul – they’d say the pope deserved it,” declared Keano to roars of laughter.

A pro in every sense, Keane put in some crunching tackles on Jason McAteer and Alan Shearer, each hit with deliciously barbed quips, delivered with perfect comic timing and an exaggerated raising of the eyebrows or roll of the eyes that screamed “McAteer, Shearer – seriously?”

Doyle wrapped it up by asking the once media shy Keane why he became a pundit and just when we thought we had him figured, he comes in from left field with a surprising admission it was down to his horoscope – to which one can but say, punditry, like football, is a funny old game.

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