Saipan fallout reflected a changing Ireland

Saipan. For those over 35, just the name of that place evokes a lot of memories - and strong feelings. The events on that island that led to Roy Keane not playing at the 2002 World Cup have played out in many a head since. They will play out again in a new movie, starring Éanna Hardwicke as Roy Keane and Steve Coogan as Mick McCarthy, which is due to be released in the New Year.

Saipan is an island in the Pacific. That the Ireland team went there to prepare for the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea is well known. That the facilities in Saipan for that preparation were not what they should have been is also well known. That there was a ferocious row, and that Roy Keane went home and did not play in the World Cup, we definitely know. Despite efforts from all sorts of people - including the then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern - there was no return.

The movie will replay those events for us and they will no doubt be dramatic. But of course events like this can be overstated in importance. Nobody, as they say, died. Football - and most especially talk about football - is a distraction from more important things.

Yet what happened in Saipan does hold importance for wider reasons. The events said something about the kind of Ireland we were becoming - or at least which many wanted us to be. Which side you took said something about you.

To set the scene in 2002, you are going back to a day when Ireland had a really strong soccer team. Roy Keane was the most influential midfield player of his generation in the English Premier League. His very best days were perhaps behind him by 2002, but Roy Keane’s very best days were so good and so recent that the 2002 version remained formidable. He was a player that the best teams in the world feared. Alongside him, we had players of the quality of Robbie Keane, Damien Duff, Shay Given and a bunch of lads playing - and playing all the time - for Premier League clubs.

We qualified for the tournament via beating the Dutch. We reduced them to a rabble by harrying them throughout, and scoring an excellent goal - well done Jason McAteer - to win it.

So, we went to the World Cup with high hopes. Even without Keane, we did very well in it. We qualified unbeaten from our group and looked and played like a well organised and serious side. In the second of the three group games, we drew with Germany. The last minute equaliser in that game is my favourite Ireland goal ever. The chaos in the German defence, the flick on from Niall Quinn, and Robbie Keane swept it into the net. It will still make you smile to see it now. And it was no fluke. Mick McCarthy had wisely brought Niall Quinn to the World Cup precisely for that moment with the flick. Germany were hanging on, and we caught them.

We got knocked out in the next round on penalties by Spain, in a game we surely could have won - reminder: even without Roy Keane. There was a real expectation in extra time that we were going to do it.

It didn’t turn out that way, and there was deep disappointment not just because we didn’t beat Spain. That World Cup was more open than many. There has always been a feeling that we could have gone a lot further in it. A semi-final appearance was certainly not fanciful. If we had beaten Spain, the quarter final opponents would have been South Korea. Even with home town advantage for them, it’s reasonable to believe we would have had a good chance in that one - even though South Korea actually beat Spain, helped by the controversial ruling out of two Spanish goals.

That was what might have been, but what were the events in Saipan about? It was in many ways a clash between an old Ireland and a new one. In the old Ireland, arriving to a training camp for a World Cup with a bumpy pitch and no footballs was a bit of a laugh, a forgivable and lovable illustration of our devil-may-care attitude.

For the new Ireland, it was an embarrassing and totally unacceptable failure to prepare for the most important test in your field of endeavour.

And that is where Saipan sits in the wider context. Ireland in 2002 was becoming a modern country, where a defining aspect was not accepting low standards in preparation or in effort. All throughout the country, dynamic people were continually frustrated by the toleration - even celebration - of what they considered to be sloppiness. That wind was blowing, and it blew like a tornado into that training camp in Saipan.

That intolerance for poor standards was linked to an increasing unwillingness to show respect to a figure of authority just because they held a title or position. For those who supported Roy Keane following his departure from Saipan, just because Mick McCarthy was the Ireland manager did not guarantee him respect.

Back in 2002, that change from automatic deference was transforming the life of the church, the practice of politics, and - although we hadn’t fully seen its effects just yet - the assumption of who should take up positions of leadership in the first place.

At the start of the 21st century, that view could be expressed simply: you had to earn respect by what you did, not what position you held. But of course that lack of automatic deference also released another element: that a figure of authority would only get respect if the person they were dealing with agreed with what they did. That was surely part of the reaction to the story in Saipan, and it has become the defining part of our public life in the time since.

In 2002, all of that wasn’t so much generational as it was about how you engaged with the changes brought about by living in a more modern and less traditional society. And that is why what you thought about what happened in Saipan said a lot about you.

Looking back, in 2002, I was more in sympathy with Mick McCarthy’s perspective. In 2025, I think I am more sympathetic to Roy Keane’s point of view about the preparations, if not with how he expressed it. But, I still think he should have stayed, and he should have played. If he had, who knows how that movie would have ended.