Saipan: Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy’s famous fallout gets an unsatisfying screen retelling in a rare sports film that has no winners

For Irish football fans of a certain age, the phrase “You can stick it up your bollocks” is etched in our collective memory. This was captain Roy Keane’s parting shot to manager Mick McCarthy as he left the Irish squad one week before the start of the 2002 World Cup. Anyone living in Ireland then will recall the hysteria that ensued as this issue divided the nation, a period that Saipan evokes with its opening montage of TV and radio soundbites. “This is like our Princess Diana,” one interviewee says, which didn’t feel like an overstatement at the time.

Saipan, directed by the husband-and-wife team Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D’Sa, is bookended by the media frenzy at home, but most of the film takes place on the eponymous island that was at the centre of the storm. This was the location chosen by the Football Association of Ireland for a pre-tournament training camp, but when the squad arrived, they found that somebody had overlooked a few essentials; the training pitch was covered in stones and there weren’t even any footballs to play with. “It would be better if we had footballs,” McCarthy (Steve Coogan) wearily admits. It’s all a far cry from the ultra-professional preparation that Keane (Eanna Hardwicke) sees his club teammates enjoying in a BBC news report on the England base camp, and the disparity enrages him.

As the squad’s one truly world-class player, and someone whose innate winning mentality had been honed by the high standards and years of success he’d enjoyed at Manchester United, Keane’s rage was not just directed at the incompetence of the Football Association of Ireland (amusingly represented by the red-faced, idiotically grinning Jamie Beamish), but at McCarthy and his teammates for too easily accepting it. For many in the Irish set-up, just getting to the World Cup was an achievement and the cue to celebrate, but Keane demanded more. “Do you know why everyone loves the Irish? Because we’re not a threat,” he argues. Leyburn and D’Sa frequently separate Keane from the rest of the squad in their striking widescreen compositions, placing him alone in the centre of a frame as he trains in the gym, or quietly seething on his balcony as he watches the rest of the squad drink and party downstairs.

There are questions of national identity and sporting ambition at play here. What should Ireland expect as a small nation competing at the highest level? The contrasting perspectives are personified by Keane and McCarthy the elite sportsman, determined to be the best, versus the humble people-pleaser attempting to make the best of what he’s got. There’s a pleading quality to Coogan’s voice when McCarthy tells Keane, “I’m trying my best, Roy.” Coogan plays McCarthy as a decent, well-meaning Yorkshireman somewhat out of his depth, with echoes of Alan Partridge when we see McCarthy discussing supermarket sandwiches or various kinds of Ronseal.

Though lankier than the real-life Keane, Hardwicke does a superb job of capturing his demeanour and his simmering intensity he can say a lot with a stern glare or tightening of the muscles. Crucially, he also gives this hardman another dimension, showing how soft-spoken and endearing he can be, usually in late-night calls to his wife, a respite from the frustrations of Saipan. Hardwicke and Coogan play well off each other, mining tension and comedy from their awkward encounters, and both excel at the film’s dramatic high point, the infamous team meeting where long-held resentments were unleashed. Cinematographer Piers McGrail shines a harsh spotlight on this scene, presenting them as two players taking the stage for a fateful encounter. 

Saipan is very entertaining, but after this climactic standoff the film’s intensity dissipates and it drifts to a conclusion, giving us time to wonder whether this story really merits a big-screen retelling two decades after the fact. For all the furore it caused in Ireland at the time, the events depicted in Saipan feel thin and parochial, and screenwriter Paul Fraser can’t find a way to give a satisfying ending to a story that lacked one. Ireland had some good moments at the World Cup but were knocked out by Spain in the last 16, while Keane went back to Manchester United before blowing up that relationship in a similar fashion a few years later. At the end of the day, this is the rare sports film that has no winners.

► Saipan is in UK cinemas 23 January.