Captain Roy Keane’s bust-up with Ireland manager Mick McCarthy ahead of the 2002 World Cup is the stuff of legend, so Éanna Hardwicke knew he had big football boots to fill
Normal People actor Éanna Hardwicke, who is playing footballer Roy Keane in a film about the infamous Saipan incident, says playing the hot-headed hardman petrified him. Éanna, 29, added of his preparation: “Roy’s side of this story is so well documented – it was pretty much live-streamed as the row happened. He gave interviews and then wrote two books on it all.
“I felt I had enough to go on so my preparation was absorbing everything. I locked myself in my bedroom. It was my brother’s attic at the time and I ended up talking to myself for four weeks. But at some point you have to forget the public person and their persona. The script was great and showed the private side to Roy you never see in the sporting arena.
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“I guess it was all about going, ‘What would you do if you were in that situation?’ At the same time you have got to embody it in your own way.” The warts-and-all movie, which opens in cinemas on January 23, is named Saipan after the tiny island to which the Irish team were flown to prepare for their World Cup campaign.
Keane had a very public, very bitter disagreement with McCarthy, reportedly being furious at the training conditions, strategy, travel arrangements, diet and McCarthy’s competence.
A subsequent interview with Keane in the Irish press sparked a major fallout at the camp, where the tough-talking footballer is said to have delivered an angry verbal tirade at McCarthy in front of his teammates, telling him to “stick your World Cup up your arse” before storming to the airport and flying back to Ireland – although McCarthy later claimed he sent Keane home.
The incident caused a huge controversy in Irish society over who was to blame and Keane would not play for his country again until 2004, after McCarthy stepped down as manager. Éanna was just six when the Saipan incident dominated the 2002 World Cup, hosted by Japan and South Korea, but even he remembers the impact.
The Cork lad says: “I was aware of the events. This row has been so mythologised. I remember the World Cup and the memories are very vivid. “I remember every satirist and every comedian at the time had a bit of Saipan in their act.
I knew of Roy Keane, he was a towering figure in Cork and it was a huge source of pride for Cork. People said he brought disgrace to his country but he did it because he was livid.” The movie, which also stars Steve Coogan, 60, as Mick McCarthy, documents the funny side to the infamous dispute too.
Keane brands Ireland’s base-camp hotel as being as bad as the one in BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers. The 90-minute movie also shows how Keane stood up for his team over travel arrangements. He was furious to discover they had to make do with business class seats on flights while officials from the Football Association of Ireland flew first class. But although he got to play the story from Keane’s point of view, Éanna admits he comes down McCarthy’s side of the row.
He says: “I was a huge fan of Roy before the film and more so after the movie. But I think because of the soul of the movie, I am of more of Mick’s persuasion. It is not a head-to-head of ideologies. It was about two very different approaches to the game and to life. I have always had more sympathy for people who have that holistic approach and see the picture a bit broader, like Mick does.”
Of being a little star-struck at working with comedy great Steve Coogan, Éanna says: “I did circle Steve for a few weeks and he did come to me and said, ‘I see you are finding your head space so do what you need to. I am here if you need anything’.”
Éanna got the acting bug aged 11, when he started going to youth theatre at the Gaiety School of Acting in Cork. In 2009, he landed a part in Conor McPherson’s horror movie The Eclipse as a child star. He made his television debut in the US Superman spin-off series Krypton but his big break came in 2020 when he landed the role of Rob Hegarty in the BBC Three series Normal People alongside Paul Mescal. It was BBC iPlayer’s most streamed show of 2020 and Éanna says: “I expected it to work, but you can never account for how it catches on and captures people’s imagination.
“You can never predict that, and I especially didn’t predict a pandemic as well. That was going to make the show very poignant for people.” It was only on leaving his home after the pandemic that Éanna discovered how famous he had become, but he says he is more interested in the work than in the fame.
Éanna, whose other roles have included Silas in Paramount’s The Doll Factory in 2023, adds: “If people see the work that you’re doing and want to talk about that, that’s a really amazing thing. If people connect to the work or are moved by it, that still blows my mind every time.”
*Saipan is in cinemas from Friday
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