Saipan film dramatises Keane–McCarthy Saipan split, focuses on character not matches

Saipan is a new film about the schism between Mick McCarthy and Roy Keane that led to Keane departing the 2002 World Cup, but it largely avoids recreating tournament action and is set mostly in a decrepit hotel. One exception is a scene of Keane, played by Éanna Hardwicke, practising alone on a tennis court where a single controlled touch is used to confirm his sporting bona fides.

The film, the screenwriter Paul Fraser says, is about masculinity, men and their egos, and about an era in Irish history — the roaring Celtic tiger and questions of national identity. Fraser argues that films struggle to reproduce the visceral emotion of a match: "Ninety minutes is what we get in a game, give or take.

Films are also 90 minutes. And the experience of the two things are fundamentally different" and "the emotion that you get from going to a game which is insane... I guess that just doesn’t really transfer over too well." Fraser, a football enthusiast who has discussed other biopic ideas, says he learned to focus on people rather than on sporting narrative.

He recalls an earlier project with Shane Meadows, TwentyFourSeven, which began as a football story and moved to boxing after the filmmakers found the sport hard to render cinematically.

Key Topics

Culture, Saipan, Roy Keane, Mick Mccarthy, Éanna Hardwicke, Paul Fraser