Tom Bumphries...ass kisser?

By Eoin Ryan

Say it ain’t so Tom, say it ain’t so… To anyone who read the self serving shite that was the recent Roy Keane interview in The Irish Times, I ask you the same question I’ve been asking myself. What was Tom Humphries thinking?

If you haven’t read it, let me briefly sum up. Roy Keane goes into some of the reasons he left Sunderland, chief among them: He got a bad vibe of new owner Ellis Short because he mentioned reading Keane’s autobiography and had the cheek to want to speak to him when the club were in a bad run of form.

Keane also made a tasteless crack about hearing former Sunderland player Clive Clarke had had a heart attack, “So they found one?” and justified his failure to relocate to Sunderland as being down to his inability to find a suitable house.

The problem for Tom Humphries, justifiably recognised as the finest Irish sportswriter around, is his apparent sycophantic acceptance of the Keane party line.

Keane justifies his absence from training sessions by blithely remarking, “I was never going to be on the training ground every day. That would have been bad for me and the players.”

This from the same man who has raged at the unprofessionalism of colleagues and subordinates for the last decade? Yet this seeming contradiction does not appear to have been pointed out to the Corkman.

The only explanation for such a timid performance by such a great writer would appear to be his desire to maintain a friendship, or at least a professional relationship, with Roy Keane that no other journalist seems to have.

If Roy Keane will only talk to Tom Humphries then The Irish Times can sell a few copies on the back of that interview, and shamelessly hype it up regardless of the content.

Love him or loathe him, Roy Keane is the closest thing we have to a national obsession, our own princess Diana, not that he’d appreciate the comparison.

Unfortunately for Irish Times’ readers, they were sold a cheap plastic pen rather than a memorial china plate