Saipan star Steve Coogan: 'The bust-up between Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy became a lightning rod' 

In a just and equal world, Roy Keane saying “stick it up your bollocks” would be up there with Lady Bracknell exclaiming “a handbag” or Prince Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” soliloquy in the literary pantheon. Immortal lines that every actor might aspire one day to perform. 

Perhaps it will be once Saipan is released in cinemas. 

The film, starring Éanna Hardwicke and Steve Coogan, tells the story of the Republic of Ireland’s team’s chaotic preparation for the 2002 World Cup, when captain Roy Keane and manager Mick McCarthy fell out in spectacular – and spectacularly quotable – style. 

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During a fabled confrontation, witnessed by the entire squad and support staff at the Hyatt Regency in Saipan, Keane told McCarthy exactly where to shove his World Cup place. 

The Manchester United midfielder returned home. While his teammates reached the last 16 of the World Cup, eventually losing to Spain on penalties after a gallant effort, Keane spent the time walking his dog, Triggs, pursued by news crews and paparazzi.   

“This is not a biopic. It is about this mythologised event that came to symbolise something about Irish life and where we were in the world,” says Hardwicke.  

“But you are still playing a public figure, who people have an idea about. So we are playing with that expectation. I really enjoyed that challenge. But he is Roy Keane. So of course it is still nerve-wracking.” 

Like Keane himself, Hardwicke is from Cork. He grew up knowing all about Keane and made his earliest stage appearances at the Everyman Theatre, where Saipan had its Irish premiere.  

“I had my formative theatre experience there when I saw A Whistle in the Dark by Tom Murphy, then I got to perform there in Gulliver’s Travels with the National Youth Theatre when I was 15,” he adds. “So to be there with Saipan in Cork, which because of Roy Keane is the spiritual home of the film? That was so special.”  

How did he get inside Keane’s head (surely a fascinating place to spend a few months) as the footballer walked away from the biggest stage in world football? Hardwicke aimed to match Keane’s intensity, rigour and work ethic on set.  

“That became a bit of a totem for me,” says the young actor, who is currently starring alongside Derry Girls favourites Nicola Coughlan and Siobhan McSweeney in Playboy of the Western World at the National Theatre in London.  

“You take in so much information when you’re playing someone that you need one or two keys that unlock everything. For me, it was that. Prepare to match the way he prepares. Treat each day the way he talks about training sessions – that you should train the way you play in the Premier League.  

“I thought, if you’re to have a fighting chance with this, you’ve got to take that attitude. It was a helpful way of feeling close to Roy so I could keep up the intensity, because I am normally a million miles away from that. I blow with the breeze a bit.” 

Read more:

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Hardwicke’s co-star Coogan was not initially convinced there was enough story for a whole movie. 

“When I was told about the film and asked to play Mick McCarthy, I was wondering why it was being made,” he says. “I remembered the big bust-up between McCarthy and Roy Keane. But is that really enough for a film? As I read the script I realised there was a lot more to it. Because it became a lightning rod for a national discussion.” 

The story is so much more than a tale of two Ireland football greats kicking off. With a soundtrack progressing from Oasis, representing the Irish diaspora in England, singing Acquiesce to the swagger of Fontaines DC representing a modern, confident Ireland on the world stage, the film explores Ireland’s standing in the world and its self-image in the era of the Celtic Tiger. Saipan looks at notions of identity and belonging.  

The film also looks at the idea of playing to win versus enjoying taking part through the power struggle as McCarthy attempts to manage his players while being systematically undermined by the Football Association of Ireland  – the failure to provide a single football for the players to train with in Saipan is particularly enraging for Keane, more used to Sir Alex Ferguson’s attention to detail and planning.  

Underlying it all is a chance to witness a key moment in the modernisation of football as it edges towards ever newer methods of coaching, fresh ideas around training and fuelling players, and the stats-led era of xG (expected goals). 

When Coogan signed up, he set about rebalancing the film.  

“Early on, it was 60-40 in favour of Roy. And I wanted it to be more even-handed,” says Coogan, who spoke with McCarthy via Zoom ahead of filming.

“Once that happened, I wanted to be on Team Mick for the purposes of the film. And I do think there is merit on both sides. Both have validity. Mick was trying to make the experience of being in a World Cup meaningful for the players and the people of Ireland. It was an important cultural experience.  

“The old cliché that it was not the winning but the taking part is something Mick was embracing, whereas Roy Keane was fed up of the idea of the plucky underdog. He wanted to kick against that. And he did.” 

The eventual confrontation, as played by Hardwicke and Coogan, is compelling. The power and advantage switches back and forth as Keane launches his tirade and McCarthy absorbs it – seeming to sense the moment his captain goes too far and loses the moral high ground. It’s beautifully written
and played. 

“Éanna is doing all the heavy lifting and the show-stopping stuff,” says Coogan. “He carries the film. He is the powerhouse. There were moments that were really impactful. 

“When he is hurling the insults, you really feel it. My role was to be the recipient of all that anger – and somehow manage or contain what he might see as bullying or arrogance.”  

Little wonder directors Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn – whose warm and wonderful film Good Vibrations about the radical indie record shop in Belfast that became a hub of the city’s new music scene in the 1970s was one of the finest films of 2012 – took on the story with relish. 

“Everything stopped in Ireland. The whole of Ireland held its breath,” recalls Leyburn. “Because all football fans know it is just 22 people running around kicking a ball – yet it can also be the most important thing in the world and bring grown men to tears.” 

“The whole story is this balance of shame and humiliation and power and status between these two men,” adds Barros D’Sa, who even read a satirical autobiography by Trigg (Keane’s dog) in her exhaustive research process. 

“It’s a lens to explore big, big themes. Listening to radio archives from the time, they would have psychologists, business leaders, legal minds, politicians, all seeking to interpret these events. So this is a story that was mythologised as soon as it happened.”  

Or, as the genius Tony Wilson – another real-life character from Steve Coogan’s back catalogue (in 24 Hour Party People) – was known to proclaim: “Don’t tell the truth, tell the myth.” 

As the film comes out, Ireland’s World Cup 2026 campaign is still alive. Do the filmmakers owe Troy Parrott, whose hat-trick versus Hungary in Budapest last November included the last-minute winner that secured Ireland a spot in the World Cup play-offs, a drink? After all, it’s been 24 years of World Cup hurt for Ireland since the events of 2002. 

“This is why we love football,” says Hardwicke. “It brought me back to why I loved playing in my backyard and why I loved playing for Riverstown, my local club. It’s only a game, but it brings out the biggest, wildest feelings and taps into something really human.” 

Leyburn and Barros D’Sa were also watching. “I got a few texts saying, ‘sequel?’” grins Leyburn. “The nature of how it happened, with the last kick of the game, adds to the romance and insanity.” 

Surely it will boost the box office… 

Barros D’Sa grins. “Well, it can’t hurt, can it?” 

Steve Coogan’s big issue

I try to be a bit more grateful and a bit more… epicurean is a word I learned not that long ago, which is living in the moment and life being in small things. In this moment, I’m healthy, I’m happy, I’m having a nice cup of tea. So I’m trying to reframe things in a way.  

But I am also really troubled by global conflict. I’m very troubled by the notion of what is acceptable behaviour in terms of conflict, by both what’s been happening in Gaza and these military attacks by the US on the boats and killing defenceless people and somehow trying to reframe that.  

So I am worried about the erosion of human rights and viewing the idea of human rights as some sort of impediment and how Reform are anti-human rights because they think it’s some red tape bureaucracy. And I really worry about how the postwar consensus on what constituted the idea of human rights, the Geneva Convention, the idea that you try to aspire to some sort of decency even in war seems to be going out the window.  

Now it’s sort of like you can do what the fuck you like. And that I find really disturbing. The idea that nation states can say we can just kill people even if they surrender. That it’s an entirely legitimate act of war to summarily execute someone who is not a threat in that moment. And somehow that you justify it by saying they represent an overarching existential threat, therefore I have the right to kill them. It is fucking dangerous. And that bothers me.  

Beyond that, I love walking my dog… just like Roy Keane. And I’m very grateful that I’m able to earn a living by expressing myself. That is a privilege and I never take that for granted.  

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