Cork in his own words: “I’ve lived in Manchester longer than I lived in Cork but Cork is my home. But I’m also grateful – Manchester has been good to me; England has been good to me. It has given me a career and a life and my kids were born there. Manchester people remind me a bit like Cork people; I like their humour. I think people generally are straight up with you. I do like Manchester but Cork is my home."
Could Cork have saved his most public downfall? Arguably. The invaluable Irish football archive Soccer Ireland posits that it was Keane's homesickness from Cork and lack of Cork allies in the Ireland squad in 2002 that sent him into that famous spiraling despair on that tiny Pacific island.
To quote:
It is abundantly clear that first and foremost Roy Keane was a Cork man. His sense of Irishness was a poor second. This is not something that is unique to Roy and is reflected elsewhere in Irish sport however he seems to have taken it to an extreme. Keane's time with the Irish squad in Saipan would have been hell on earth for him. Thousands of miles from his wife and children, no friends in the Irish set up, miles away from Cork, no Cork men in the squad (Denis Irwin had retired and Colin Healy hadn't been picked by Irish football manager Mick McCarthy). It may not have been a decisive element in the Saipan incident but there is no doubt that his own personal sense of Corkness, as opposed to his Irishness, was a significant contributory factor.
