If ever there was a man for shying out of a tackle, it sure as hell wasn't Roy Keane.
The Manchester United legend's reputation is equal parts legendary and fearsome, and perhaps his best known trait aside from his leadership was his combatism on the pitch.
In total, Keane was sent off ten times while with Manchester United, with another red card coming while on Ireland duty.
One of the most infamous incidents saw Keane dismissed in an FA Cup semi-final replay against Crystal Palace in 1995 for a stamp on Gareth Southgate. When the now-England manager came flying in with a dangerous lunge on Keane, the Irishman had no hesitation in wheeling around and planting his foot hard into Southgate's chest.
Palace man Darren Patterson would be sent off in the melée that followed (an underrated element of this is the speed with which Keane's fellow Corkman Denis Irwin rushes to the speed of the crime). Manchester United would go on to win the game 2-0 and progress to the final.
It may not quite be up there with the Alf-Inge Haaland incident, or his clashes with Alan Shearer, but it has become an infamous flashpoint in the early years of Roy Keane at Manchester United.
Speaking on this week's episode of the Overlap's 'Stick to Football' podcast, Keane explained why he had planted his foot into Southgate's chest, joking that he could not understand Southgate's "nice guy" reputation, and that the Palace man had been asking for it.
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Roy Keane explains why he stamped on Gareth Southgate in FA Cup semi
When quizzed on the amount of red cards he received over the course of his professional career, Roy Keane lowballed his actual number before running through a few of the "stand out" dismissals of his career.
Swiping past the infamy of Haaland and Shearer, and the hilarity of a Charity Shield red card, Keane moved on to his FA Cup semi-final red card of 1995, and joked that Gareth Southgate "deserved" the stamp he earned with his two footed lunge:
I don't regret any of them. Obviously the one everyone remembers is the Haaland one. I got sent off at Newcastle a couple of times with your [Wright's] mate Shearer. Sent off at Blackburn, sent off once for Ireland...I was sent off in the Charity Shield against Chelsea.
Gareth...Gareth deserved that. Gareth lunged at me. Gareth's nasty, everyone seems to think Gareth's a nice guy. He tried to break my leg!
I can tolerate him now.
No regrets with them [the red cards].
Whatever about the aggression of Keane's stamp, Southgate's wild tackle would undoubtedly be a red card in the modern day - and likely should have been even in the tougher days of mid-90s cup football.
The discussion of Keane's best red cards begins at 19:00 in the below video.
It is not the first time that the '95 clash between Keane and Southgate has been addressed by either party.
In fact, the pair appeared together during ITV's coverage of the 2013 FA Cup semi-final between Chelsea and Manchester City, when Sergio Aguero avoided a sending off for a similar offence.
On the broadcast that day, Southgate joked that it was the worst tackle he had seen since Keane's stamp on him in 1995 - though he accepted it had been in retaliation.
All Keano could muster was a laugh and a faint "sorry, Gareth..."
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