We begin with archival audio of radio pundits and ordinary citizens commenting on the notorious conflict between Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy in the run-up to the 2002 World Cup. One citizen notes that Irish people were treating it like the death of Princess Diana and wonders if we will eventually wake up and think ourselves deranged.
More than two decades have passed, and the subject is still deemed fit subject for a motion picture from the directors of Good Vibrations, the film. Steve Coogan is the lugubrious Republic of Ireland manager. Éanna Hardwicke is the volatile midfielder.
Domestic viewers will detect metaphors for conflicting attitudes to post-Tiger Ireland in the ebb and flow of the dispute. It remains to be seen whether those outside the country will have any understanding what the fuss was about.
Beware spoilers ahead? You may as well warn readers they are about to hear who won the second World War. Weeks before the start of the tournament, in Japan and South Korea, McCarthy brought his squad to a training camp on Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands.
READ MORE
Conditions were far from ideal: rutted pitch, indifferent catering, no sun cream. “It would be better if we had footballs,” McCarthy grudgingly admits when those vital items are discovered missing. Keane’s objections to the manager’s handling of the crisis eventually led to his leaving (or being expelled from) the squad. Germany lost the second World War.
The two leads wisely do not go for straight impersonations. Hardwicke, a lankier, less coiled presence than his fellow Corkman, gives us regimental rectitude rather than simmering fury. That marginally calmer energy causes his final meltdown at a team meeting – some quotes from which have entered the vernacular – to seem all the more disturbing.
Coogan has, perhaps, the harder task and, though he remains as diligent as ever, he can’t quite fashion one of his signature oddballs from all that neutral energy. Alice Lowe, as Mrs McCarthy, sums up the Pooterish creation when, as Mick is heading for the airport, she reminds him not to forget “Auntie Pat’s Cointreau”. If Paul Fraser’s script had nudged a bit harder in that direction, Mick might have ended up as Coronation Street comic relief.
The film looks, on balance, to favour Keane until he threatens to leave the squad. On this representation of events (I make no comment on accuracy), the organisation did reflect an old Ireland of lower expectations. “You want to hear why everyone loves the Irish?” Keane says. “Because we’re not a threat.” News footage of the England operation reveals, embarrassingly, a professionalism missing from our own camp.
When talk moves to Keane’s possible evacuation, however, Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D’Sa, skilful directors of good actors, guide our attention to McCarthy’s simple decency. “Other … people … matter!” he eventually throws back at a raging Keane.
Supporters of both men – the nation is still divided – will find plenty to agree with and plenty to rail at as the film drifts towards a conclusion that will astonish nobody who was alive at the time.
[ Saipan 20 years on: The inside story of the World Cup row that divided a nationOpens in new window ]
Support is strong from, in particular, Harriet Cains, indomitable as Theresa Keane, and Jamie Beamish, who makes an oily, blazered bingo caller of a senior Irish official. (Those more in the sporting know than me can risk identifying the inspiration.)
Praise should also go the way of the music supervision from Dina Coughlan and Rory McPartland. One can hardly imagine a better choice, as antagonists divide, than Bob Dylan’s Positively 4th Street: “You got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend. When I was down you just stood there grinning.”
For all the good work, however, the film fails to fully capture the madness of the response at home. A bit more archival footage of Eamon Dunphy might have helped – though the best imaginable person to embody a semifictional version of that singular personality is already playing McCarthy.
Saipan, which premieres this weekend at Toronto International Film Festival, will, alas, not land in Irish cinemas until sometime after its appearance at London Film Festival, in mid-October.
