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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
Sport
Vincent Whelan

Inside Tommie Gorman's 2002 interview with Roy Keane ahead of RTE legend's appearance on The Late Late Show

Retired journalist Tommie Gorman will be appearing on The Late Late Show this evening and while he had a hugely varied career with RTE particularly in covering The Troubles, you can nearly bet at some point his 2002 interview with Roy Keane will be dredged up.

The interview took place back in Ireland after Keane had flown home from the Irish team's infamous R & R pre-World Cup base.

It was a bit of a curveball that Gorman was the one who got the interview but that was largely because most if not all of the senior Irish football journalists were over on the far side of the world covering the team.

READ MORE: Scott Hogan gunning for goals after 'failing' to deliver in recent seasons

The chat lasted 35 minutes and is available to watch on YouTube.

Over the course of the back-and-forth, Gorman attempts to facilitate a potential compromise between Keane and manager Mick McCarthy

But it's apparent throughout that Keane feels he is 100% in the right to have voiced his disapproval of the shoddy facilities that greeted them at the now notorious tiny island.

Upon another viewing, it's also clear that tension had been building in the days leading up to Keane going to McCarthy with his list of concerns.

The Man United great felt there was too much of a lackadaisical attitude across the board in how the staff and players as a whole had a laugh about how there were no footballs as well as the training surface being substandard.

Of course, the greatest tragedy of the whole thing was that the actual training base that they then moved onto for the duration of the tournament was top-notch.

But the damage was done when friction that had built up over the years between Ireland's captain and manager reached breaking point after Keane had given an interview to the press in which he repeated some of his worries about the set-up.

Cork's most famous son paints a vivid picture as he describes how McCarthy came in brandishing an edition of the paper in question.

A team meeting was called where, crucially, no one stood up for Keane which further ostracised him from the group.

The damage was done and while the rest of the squad and staff moved on to Japan and South Korea - Keane hopped on a flight to Dublin.

It's a real shame as while we fared well in that tournament, its wide-open nature meant it's not inconceivable that The Boys in Green could have made the final had their best player been lining out in the middle of the park.

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