He was eventually tracked down and 40 minutes late boarded the bus to receive a roasting from Charlton. Except that, in Cascarino’s words, “‘ Roy didn’t blink: ‘I didn’t ask you to wait, did I?’”

“No one stood up to Jack like that!” Cascarino writes, adding: “It’s quite easy to form the wrong impression of Roy. He demands a lot on the field and can be abrasive and difficult to play with when you don’t measure up to his standards, but he’s very bright and has a good sense of humour when you get to know him.”

So far so good. Except that Cascarino concludes: “Not that I would ever claim to know him. The only people who really know Roy Keane are his family in Cork.”

Not knowing Keane, of course, has failed to stop millions of people from holding their own views of the man. For, however protective he is of his and his family’s privacy, his behaviour around fellow footballers and public pronouncements on their varying degrees of ability make him stand out from the crowd as much as his footballing ability. Most fellow professionals view him in much the same way as Cascarino: with a bemusing mixture of respect and confusion. They can relate to his ceaseless desire for success even though they often find themselves on the wrong end of his tongue-lashings before, during and after matches. But his unabashed preference to stay away from the social events and fashionable haunts frequented by his fellow Old Trafford millionaires is something they have difficulty dealing with. He even stays away from their kids’ birthday parties, for goodness sake!

Basically, Keane has all the hallmarks of a loner, and an intense one at that. When fellow Corkonian and room-mate Denis Irwin bowed out from international soccer following the play-off defeat to Turkey in November 1999, Keane requested to go it alone, keeping himself to himself in team hotels. There is nothing wrong with any of this - as long as you’re not one of the best paid footballers in the Premiership. That is the Keane conundrum in a nutshell. He is an ordinary man, with an ordinary man’s preferences and insecurities. It’s just that he has the extraordinary talents that have propelled him into an abnormal world of excess and ostentation.

As Keane made his way back from Japan following his remarkable departure from the World Cup squad, many who profess to have known him, were trying to read the tea-leaves from the former Ireland captain’s cup and putting together the pieces of an extraordinary chain of events. Most have chosen to highlight the now infamous players’ meeting at which Keane and McCarthy seem to have gone toe to toe.

Charlton, the Englishman who gave Keane his first cap in 1991 and took the midfielder to the 1994 finals in the United States, said: “I think when Roy sits down and thinks about what he’s done he will have a few regrets. You don’t walk out on a World Cup. He’s one of the best players in the world and he should be at the finals.

“He had his complaints about their preparations but that has nothing to do with the players.”

Former Rockmount manager Billy Cronin has known Keane from his teenage days before the spotlight fell on the boy from Mayfield. Cronin has seen him at close quarter since his days playing with the Munster Senior League club in Cork and he believes Mick McCarthy’s poor man management of Keane, his lack of insight into what makes Keane tick, was the root cause of the problem. “From what it sounds like, McCarthy didn’t handle this at all well and he didn’t know how to handle Roy,” Cronin said. “It was very bad. What was he hoping to achieve by bringing Roy out in front of all the other players? That was ridiculous and very bad management. It would have to have been the biggest mistake and the moment that marked the downfall of the whole situation.

“The right thing to do would have been to sort it out one-to-one and let Roy get his complaints heard by McCarthy. Because up to that meeting it looked like all the fuss had blown over.” Cronin also said he thought criticism of Keane’s loyalty to the Irish cause is unfair and added: “Roy has always given fierce commitment to Ireland. It’s the same whichever club he has played for, he’s unbelievable in his loyalty. But he’s a winner and it shows.

“He won’t be happy with the outcome, there’s no doubt about that; he’ll be annoyed the way it’s turned out. If the right conditions are in place and the right facilities are there, he’ll toe the line. But he’s no different from anyone else in that when something isn’t right at their place of work they will say something. It’s a natural reaction and things were obviously not right out in Japan. He was just doing the same thing anyone would.” Respected journalist and author David Meek has followed Keane’s career at close at hand as the Manchester United beat reporter for the Manchester Evening News.

Recently retired from newspapers, Meek said: “It’s a surprise. At the end of the day I thought he liked football too much to walk away from it and to cut his nose off to spite his face. But then for the last two years he’s been quite outspoken and called a spade a spade. He’s been very critical of his teammates and no hesitation in speaking his mind. It’s happened as he’s got older and become a captain and he feels an entitlement to speak out. I don’t think United fans here in Manchester will be all that disturbed - as long as he doesn’t get kicked out of United the bulk of them will be saying, ‘well, that’s Roy.’ “It’s been fairly well established that there has been a bit of an iffy relationship between Roy and McCarthy and the FAI. On the other hand, he has always had a good relation-ship with Manchester United contract-wise and also, of course, with Alex Ferguson. I couldn’t envisage a similar situation ever happening at Old Trafford as has happened today in Japan. But I’m not so sure I would necessarily agree with the generalisation that if you treat Roy right he’ll treat you right. After all he’s a law unto himself and he gets these bees in his bonnet. But these don’t necessarily mean he is always right.

“I think the only firm conclusion you can draw from this is that Irish football does not mean enough to him. He has become disillusioned with the whole set-up.”