When the Irish football team touched down in Saipan just over 20 years ago there was no sign that the team’s preparations for the World Cup in Japan and South Korea were days away from imploding in a fashion that would make headlines on the front and back pages of newspapers all over the world
Almost as soon as the plane took off from Dublin things took a sour turn and as the team crossed the planet, heading from Dublin to Amsterdam to Tokyo and on finally to Saipan, there was tension on board.
On one occasion a clearly disgruntled Roy Keane – the Irish captain and talismanic midfielder – had berated some of the travelling press pack travelling in the cheap seats for stories which had displeased him in Irish newspapers on the day the team set off.
Things were only going to get worse.
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- May 23, 2022
