I had Roy Keane down as many things. Excellent player, inspirational captain, bad tempered perfectionist, occasionally vicious midfield enforcer, but, funnily enough, stand-up comedian wasn’t one of them.
No, Roy has had a rather ferocious public image over the years, inspirational on the field, but far too intense to be considered a funny man.
Unfortunately, for me at least, Sunderland’s manager decided to reveal his sense of humour, cutting wit and crisp comic timing at my expense at this morning’s press conference.
I’d like to say I was annoyed or that I felt harshly treated by the Irishman, but I’ve got to hold my hands up - see, nice use of footballer speak there - and admit I probably deserved it.
It was supposed to be a question to open up a debate on the changing face of football, how footballers have started to resemble track and field athletes, that the steadily increasing pace of the game has changed tactics and technique, how physical strength and power now out-weigh skill and technique in a manager’s thinking and whether great players from bygone eras would have been able to succeed in the modern game.
That was the theory at least. In practice, having asked what pacy new right winger Carlos Edwards would bring to the side, it went more like this...
ME: “Roy, you said a couple of months ago that your squad was too slow to break teams down, with that in mind and with Carlos already signed, is pace a requirement of every player you are looking to sign at the moment?�
ROY: “Pace is very important, yes.�
ME “Why is pace so important?
ROY: (Already with the start of a smirk on his face) “Because it means you can get to the ball quicker than the opposition.�
ME : (As rest of journalists in press conference fall off their chairs laughing and Roy tries hard not to join them) Right......erm..... (re-adjust position in chair) I see, (thinking - “must try to rescue this, I had a point, I’m sure I did) is that it?
ROY: (Warming to my discomfort) Is this your first day in the job?
ME: (Chopped down in a similar way to how Manchester City midfielder Alf-Inge Haaland must have felt when Keane scythed him down with a knee high tackle at Old Trafford back in 2001) “Nope, but it might well be my last!�
ROY: (Still smiling in the way a stand-up comedian does when slaughtering a member of the audience) It will be when I tell your editor about that question! No, look, pace is important because it means you can turn the opposition and get in behind them. Look at all the top players these days, they’ve all got pace, Cristiano Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, all of them.�
Thankfully, at around that point, someone decided to ask a question about Graham Kavanagh’s knee operation. It will keep him out for 10 weeks or something, but by that stage I’d kinda lost interest!
Mind you, one player who probably rarely gets to see Keane’s comic side is Jon Stead. The striker is back at the Stadium of Light after a successful loan spell with promotion-chasing Derby County, but it doesn’t seem like he is itching to get back into things with the Black Cats.
The former Blackburn and Huddersfield Town striker scored three goals in 15 games at Pride Park compared to two in 40 for the Wearsiders and was thought to be on the move in a permanent deal.
But, as the clubs posture over a price and whether defender Lewin Nyatanga comes in the opposite direction as part of the deal, Stead has unexpectedly returned to the Stadium of Light.
Not that he will play in the FA Cup game at Preston on Saturday. Stead has picked up a groin strain, a less-than-impressed Keane informed us.
Could it be that Stead doesn’t want to get cup-tied and has pulled a fast one? It might be a genuine injury, but Keane certainly wasn’t smiling about it.
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