Keane on Fire at Off The Ball Roadshow

Off The Ball brought their live experience to their biggest audience at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre last night and every one of the 2,132 in attendance will have felt it was worthwhile spending over three hours in their company, and that of Roy Keane and Gary Neville.

Adrian Barry teed us up that it was expected to be two and a half hours or so but that it might run a little bit over and Joe Molloy admitted coming back after half time that he had barely got through the first half of his own page of notes on where the conversation might go.

Roy Keane and Gary Neville have built strong careers post their Man United days but it was there that the focus was in the early exchanges. Molloy and Nathan Murphy had a few samll microphone glitches in the early moments but the two lads were in a mood to carry the conversation perfectly well on their own.

Keane pulled no punches still on his departure from Manchester United and was willing to let it be known that Alex Ferguson, the Sir appendage didn’t get an airing, and David Gill were still far from his personal list of phone calls he was likely to make.

The anger runs deep in terms of how he was treated on his departure, even if some of his angriest comments were followed up with a charming smile.

Neville was a perfect foil and admitted that he was hearing some of the material for the first time on how the infamous Video commentary of a loss to Middlesborough and arrangements at a training camp in Portugal were seen from his former Captain’s perspective.

In comparison Mick McCarthy got off lightly when the conversation turned to Saipan. Still no stepping back from Keane’s insistence that he was right to stand his ground when his professionalism was questioned in front of the players but there were more recent gripes to air in connection with Ireland.

Molloy and Murphy looked visibly uneasy when Keane started cutting into Jonathon Walters, Harry Arter and Kenny Cunningham as the evening became ever more interesting.

Walters programme of ‘not training and not playing’ was questioned as was his media work, some of which was with Newstalk.

Kenny Cunningham’s ‘need to be liked by everyone’ didn’t get him into the top rank of Captains he had worked with but Cunningham, a regular pundit on Off The Ball will come out in his own defence as Murphy suggested.

This was no holds barred Keane at his feistiest and it was great entertainment. Off the Ball will be playing out highlights from the event over the coming days. It will be an interesting edit suite as they look to see what might be considered to have strayed beyond the line of fair play.

Anyway, the evening ended up with Keane and Neville playing out games of hurling, cricket and football tennis to win a prize from Cadbury of a Premier League trip for a member of the audience. Keane came out second best after a few testy calls from the referee but ended with a smile.

He insists he would like to get back into management at club level while recognising that ‘Real Madrid aren’t going to come calling.’ You just have to hope that some of the players from his recent past aren’t playing at the clubs he might pitch up to.

Last night’s event was sponsored by Cadbury as part of their partnership with the premier League. All proceeds from the night went to Aware.