This afternoon, the main bar at the Templeacre Tavern on Cork's north side will fill around midday. In their Sunday clothes, the mostly middle-aged and older men come for an experience every bit as religious as the mass they will have been to this morning. They'll sit and watch Manchester United play for the championship and feel again the thrill of watching their boy lead the charge.
Proclamations of their devotion to Roy Keane hang on every wall. High above the main bar a photograph of Keane is pinned alongside a framed print of Christy Ring, the greatest hurler of all. In Cork there is no higher praise. To the right of the big screen hangs a framed United jersey worn by Keane, on another wall his Irish international jersey. And there is the corner they call "the parlour".
On important evenings for Manchester United, you might find Roy's father and brothers in that corner. The parlour is a shrine to the footballers of Temple United, the local club for which Keane's brothers have played. During his summer break, Roy himself will be back, sitting in that corner, calling his round like everyone else, encouraging the singers to get something going, and reminding his old cronies that while everything has changed, nothing has changed.
In the Templeacre nobody bothers him. On the day in 1993 that Alex Ferguson paid Nottingham Forest £3.75m for his services, Keane sat with his brothers in the parlour like any other customer, happy to separate himself from the brouhaha.
Formerly the bar manager at the Templeacre, Tony Maher makes an annual trip to Old Trafford: "We ring Roy in advance, tell him we intend coming and need tickets for, say, the Liverpool match. 'Jaysus, lads, could you not pick a match where there would more of a demand?' he'll say. We know it's not easy for him but, in the end, he'll just ask: 'How many?' 'Forty,' we say. He'll meet us at the airport, give our tickets, and there will be a match organised against a local team. Roy always comes to watch us play and looks after us fierce well. He's never forgotten where he's come from."
Nor have they.
It is Thursday evening in the Metropole Hotel on MacCurtain Street. Timmy Murphy takes a seat at the bar and orders a pint of stout. Back in the 1980s, Murphy managed the Rockmount boys team, the greatest schoolboy team Cork has ever seen. "See this," he says, taking an old photograph from his inside pocket, "this was the Rockmount under-11s, and Roy Keane's first ever trophy in football."
Keane is at the back, by far the smallest of the team, and he holds the statuette as if it were a dead fish. As if he already knew more important battles were to come. But the expression on his face is unmistakable; no smile, only the warrior's hardness.
That young side became a dominant force in Cork, winning the League and Cup double for six consecutive seasons. Five of the team would play age-group football for Ireland and most would get trials with English clubs. But deterred by his lack of physique and volatile temperament, the scouts passed on Keane. Timmy Murphy sensed they were missing the point. "We really had some smashing players in that side," he says, "but Roy Keane had attitude. He wanted to get on and wanted to do whatever had to be done."
To practise his heading, Keane hung a football from a clothes line at his home in Lotamore Park. He got summer work in an off-licence so he could strengthen himself by lifting crates of beer. Then there was his almost manic desire on the pitch. "I used to call him the Boiler Man," says Murphy. "You know, the fellow who mans the furnace, who gets things heated up and keeps them that way. He was the motivator, the leader.
"When things were going bad for Rockmount, all you had to do was roar at Roy. He would do the rest."
With Keane, it was never just words. "He was fiery alright," says Murphy. "I was having a laugh with Roy about that a few weeks ago. He was saying 'Was I always this kind of player?' and I said, 'Yeah, you sure were'."
From that fine Rockmount team, Alan O'Sullivan signed for Luton Town, Paul McCarthy went to Brighton and Keane yearned for a trial. So desperate was he that he wrote to English clubs asking for one but, when scouts watched, they reported he wasn't big enough. At 17, he joined League of Ireland club Cobh Ramblers. Seven months later he was on his way to Nottingham Forest.
Noel McCabe, a Dublin-based scout, watched Keane play for Cobh in an FAI Youths Cup game and decided he had seen something unusual. For his fine book The Garrison Game, Dave Hannigan interviewed McCabe, who recalled his first meeting with Keane: "The boy wanted to be a footballer so bad. He was so eager and enthusiastic that I felt here was a boy who would swim to England if I asked him to."
Whatever Forest offered, Keane was prepared to accept: "I was desperate. I was thinking, 'Well, I'm 18 now, so if Forest don't take me, this is probably going to be it'."
On his frequent trips back to Cork Keane would tell people that it was grand playing for Forest. Brian Clough just told him to go out and "get the ball and give it to my Nigel".
Being in Forest's first team moved Keane into a world for which he was unprepared. His aggression and short temper got him in trouble on the field; his naivety and immaturity led to problems off it. Nothing that threatened self-destruction, but sufficient for Keane to be dismissed as another badly-behaved footballer. That was then. Keane is now married to Theresa, has three children and a more mature attitude.
Even so, he is reluctant to speak of a transformation: "People always ask if I've settled down and I'm afraid to say 'yes' because, as soon as I say that, I go off and do something stupid." The perception of Keane as a wild boy presented a stereotype that didn't stack with those who knew him. David O'Leary remembers a conversation from their early days in the Irish squad. "One day Roy came up to me and said: 'Dave, who looks after your affairs?' I wasn't sure why he was asking me, maybe because I had been around for a while. I said, 'Roy, he's a solicitor called Michael Kennedy and if you get him looking after you, it'll be the best move you'll ever make.' Everything Roy has done since then has been in close consultation with Michael. Roy doesn't breathe without Michael knowing about it, and it has worked out well."
Back in Cork, those who knew Keane never thought much of the popular perceptions. He came home in the early years with his red Mercedes and a ROY 1 vanity numberplate and, sure, they thought that a bit much. A year later they noticed the car and the fancy plate had been replaced.
John Delea has been a Rockmount man all his life and is now the chairman of Keane's old club. "I've been going over to England to see Roy play for years. I'd often go with Roy's uncle, Michael Lynch, Jamesie Corcoran, Billy Cronin and Declan Courtney. In those early years Roy would put us up at his house in Manchester. I had my own bedroom, my own key to the house and this went on for two or three years, until Roy and Theresa had their second child. I had to give my bedroom to the new arrival, which I suppose was fair enough.
"Every year it just gets better and better with Roy. He collects us at the airport, brings us to the hotel he has booked for us, gets us tickets for the game, tickets for the players' lounge afterwards, and I have a photo of myself with every Man United player. After the players' bar we'd go back to Roy's house for something to eat and then down to the local with him for a drink on Saturday night.
"Sunday morning, he would be outside the hotel, waiting to bring me down to United's training at the Cliff. I'd stay in his jeep and watch from there. One morning he brought over Alex Ferguson to meet me, another morning Eric Cantona.
"On the Monday he would take us to the finest eating house in Manchester, and without any flashness, none of this 'I'm Roy Keane, I have a table booked'. Nothing like that at all, we go there quietly, everything has been pre-booked and paid for in advance by Roy. We have a lovely lunch and he drops us back to the airport. Unbelievable what he does for us. When I go back to the brewery where I work, the people there just don't believe me."
Last season Delea and the men travelled over for a United v Liverpool game. Keane offered the usual chauffeuring service and, on the Monday, as he loaded their bags into the back of his jeep, he slipped a piece of paper into Delea's hand. "Somethin' small for the club," he said quietly. At the airport, the Rockmount chairman had a look: it was a cheque for £5,000.
Keane will not like his decency being publicly lauded because, for him, that creates an impression of a "goody-two shoes", something he has energetically managed to avoid up to now. Last Wednesday Roy's mother, Marie, stopped by at Delea's house. She had a message from her son for the Rockmount chairman. The white envelope simply said: "John Delea". Inside were two tickets for the FA Cup final. Delea had half-expected them.
"When Roy got to his first Wembley final, in 1991, he sent the club two tickets to be raffled among the members. We made £1,000 out of the draw. Every time since then he has done exactly the same; one year United got to the League Cup final and the FA Cup final and we did fierce well. Roy just does it automatically now.
"I think so much of the man that it's got to the stage where I don't like to go to a pub to watch United play anymore. I'd be afraid some Corkman will be cheering for the other team, an anti-Man United fellow, and, knowing what I know, I'll just get drawn into a row."
