Saipan: Revisiting a Controversial Chapter in Irish Football

Saipan hits Irish cinema screens this week, and it revisits one of the biggest controversies in Irish sporting history.

The film returns to the site of the battle between Ireland captain Roy keane and manager mick mccarthy ahead of the 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan.

Directed by Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn (the co-directors of Ordinary Love and Good Vibrations),Saipan stars Steve Coogan as Mick McCarthy and rising star Éanna Hardwicke as a steely-eyed Roy Keane.

The movie delves into the heady atmosphere across the nation as Irish fans were gripped by World Cup fever.

However, from the opening scenes, it is clear that the tensions between the captain and the manager were going to erupt at some point.

“You can look at it and think this was avoidable and how it could have been different,” actor Coogan told RTÉ News.

Coogan went on to explain that it is the blood, sweat, and fiery exchanges of the McCarthy-Keane relationship that are at the heart of Saipan, and that the film sets out to unravel a sporting story that still causes heated debates more than two decades later.

Ultimately, it was the breakdown in this vital relationship that led to Keane’s departure from the Irish camp on the eve of the World Cup, causing huge controversy back at home and abroad.

As the media worked itself into a frenzy, the fans were torn between their support for either Keane or McCarthy.

Written by Paul Fraser, Saipan is not a documentary, but a dramatic re-imagining of the events of that long, hot summer.

With the film, the cast was keen to show that while there are moments of pure comedy in the story, this epic battle was about two very sincere men with different views on this massive opportunity for the country.

Éanna Hardwicke said he wanted to play Keane as “he was one of the most influential footballers of his generation”.

The Cork actor explained that in 2002, it was Keane’s last chance to play in a World Cup, “and he clearly has history with the manager, from their pasts when McCarthy was a player, so that is part of Roy’s perspective, and that was really interesting to get into”.

coogan sees McCarthy as a man whose attitude to the