The trepidation with which Gary Neville raises the question to Roy Keane on the latest episode of the Overlap's 'Stick to Football' is a mark of how much Saipan continues to rankle those involved.
Keane and Neville are part of a quintet alongside Jamie Carragher, Ian Wright, and Jill Scott who have joined up the weekly hour-long chat about their immense careers, and this week's episode (a quartet this time out, minus Carra) was the first to broach the topic of the infamous 2002 World Cup fallout between Keano and Ireland manager Mick McCarthy.
It divided the nation unlike anything else, as Keane either left or was sent home (depending on who you ask) from the pre-World Cup training camp on the remote Pacific island of Saipan.
His abrupt departure came after he raised issue with the training conditions the FAI had prepared for the players in Saipan. A contentious Irish Times interview on the matter found its way back to McCarthy, the manager pulled Keane up on it in a team meeting and certain people were told to shove World Cups certain places.
You're all familiar with the story.
However, on this week's Overlap episode, Keane reveals one element of the fallout which he wishes would have gone differently - and which may have seen him stay in Japan with the squad at the World Cup.
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"No regrets": Roy Keane opens up about Saipan behind the scenes
When asked by Gary Neville for the highlight and lowlight of his international career, there was an obvious choice for the latter for Roy Keane.
The Irishman of course chose the incidents of May 2002 and his fallout with Mick McCarthy, and says that he would not have disclosed his lack of respect for McCarthy were he to revisit the events again.
Keane even revealed that, after conducting the infamous Irish Times interview which opened the floodgates for the incident, he had asked the interviewer to leave out the line about his lack of respect for McCarthy - a request which was not granted. He suggested that, had that information not found its way back to his manager, things may have worked out differently:
I told the reporter that [the comment] was private...but word got back to Mick.
Where I fell out with Mick - again, this was in front of a whole group of players - he said, 'if you don't respect me, how can you play for me?'
I should have said, 'well, I'm not playing for you, I'm playing for my country.' It's very simple. But, at the time, I went, 'alright, I won't.'
I've no regrets about that. But all the stuff around it...if you're a senior player, if someone questions me in front of a group of people - and it happened to me at United - and questions me about my commitment to the cause, shall we say. As I said, it was bizarre that in that campaign, after we qualified from a tough group.
Whatever about me being captain, I was one of the senior players, and a manager felt he could pull me in front of the group and question my commitment, and then talk about respect.
This idea of a manager on an ego trip, 'oh, you have to respect me to play for me.' Of course I don't! Another manager might come in next week! I'd been playing for Ireland since I was 14-15 years of age. Don't you go on an ego trip thinking I'm here to play for you, I'm here to play for my country!
We've spent years debating the "what ifs" of that falling out in Saipan, and will continue to do so for years - but the truth is that the seeds were planted far in advance of the falling out in the Pacific.
Roy Keane would add on the Overlap this week that he had had issues with the conditions for players in Ireland camps as far back as a qualifier in Amsterdam in 2000, and that he had not felt a huge amount of respect from McCarthy even when the pair were players together for Ireland:
When I got into the senior squad, some players would make an effort for you, and some wouldn't.
Mick wouldn't have made any effort for me - that's fine, he wasn't the only one. There were some players who would take you...absolutely not [he wasn't close with McCarthy].
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