But I never criticised him for the player he was. And let's be clear . . . he deserves this week's accolade considering his input into the rise and rise of Manchester United during a dozen years' residency at Old Trafford.

In that time no player drove the team forward as much as the Cork-born star.

Bryan Robson and Eric Cantona were bulwarks of the United success story in their own right, but Keane, aside from being a magnificent player and on-field conductor of his manager's wishes, actually became the very heartbeat of the club. He led by example and brought them to heights . . . culminating in the treble year of '99 . . . which surpassed anything the famed teams of the 50s or 60s ever managed to achieve. And that is saying something.

Like all great players, you sense that a lot of that burning desire came from rejection in his formative years. Small and slight in his early teens, he had to fight his way to the top. His schoolboy years and his growing up in Cork probably taught him more than anything about the importance of persistence, of not giving up, of not accepting a situation of apparent failure.

Nowhere was this resolve and refusal of the apparently inevitable more graphically illustrated than on Wednesday night 21 April, 1999 in the Stadio Delle Alpi when after drawing 11 against Juventus at Old Trafford, United were 2-0 down within the first 10 minutes and seemingly dead and buried in the Champions League semifinal.

Keane though was not prepared to go gently into the night. His body language railed against the odds and his defiance spread as he breathed new life and hope into the team with that headed goal from a corner, which left his teammates daring to dream that they could recover. They did by winning 32 on the night and 4-3 on aggregate.

The irony of his performance was that he was booked for what I consider a rash challenge on Zinedine Zidane.

Jesper Blomqvist didn't help him with that pass, but there was no need to make such a challenge. The sad part was that he was denied a place in the final against Bayern Munich in the Nou Camp. This was a pity because he was at the height of his powers then and I feel United would have won with his influence as of right rather than in the fortunate way they did on the night.

If the earlier part of Keane's life was uphill, he can thank his lucky stars that when professional soccer came calling, it did so in the guise of Brian Clough.

Old Big Head was a champion of the beautiful game, claiming that if God wanted people to hump high balls up and down a field, he would have put grass on the clouds.

His Nottingham Forest were renowned for their philosophy of playing football on the ground and in particular playing it through the middle of the park. In such surroundings the young Roy Keane thrived, using his lungs to go box to box and make a name for himself by scoring more than his fair share of goals.

When Kenny Dalglish and Ferguson went head to head for him in the early nineties as Clough and Forest were departing the upper echelons of the English game, Keane's instinct served him well. Although he had given his word to Dalglish and Blackburn that he would join them, Ferguson sold him the Old Trafford dream. And he bought it, even though it did cost him short term in terms of the lesser amount of wages United were offering.

But as we now look back on the move, it was clearly the right one as he grew into a folk hero over the years, first as an able lieutenant to Robson and Paul Ince with the older team Ferguson had in place, and then as the general of the red forces from the mid-nineties to last season. What endeared him to the United faithful and drew grudging admiration from other sets of supporters was his focus, his total commitment and of course his football intelligence.

Given the levels he achieved at United, it was always going to be hard for him to match these performances on the international stage with the Republic of Ireland. Contributing factors in this was the fact that he held neither Jack Charlton nor Mick McCarthy in the same regard or with the same respect as he did Alex Ferguson or Brian Clough.

In the '94 World Cup finals in the USA he, like all the team, had a magnificent game against Italy in Giant Stadium, but was up and down, again like the team, in subsequent matches and it is my contention that we only got to see the real Roy Keane in green when we set out on the qualifying campaign for Japan.

By then he had a young team around him and having decided to put away his differences with the manager, he proceeded to turn in a string of magnificent performances, particularly against the big teams such as Portugal and Holland in home and away games. Quite simply Roy was immense, the difference between qualification and not.

Unfortunately as we looked forward to those finals in the Far East, something altered in the life and style of Keane. He changed from someone who shied away from publicity to a person who wanted to make a lot of comment, not just on Ireland but Old Trafford as well. Without wishing to trawl over old ground, I don't agree with that. No matter how great you are as a player, it is no excuse for those outbursts, which in my opinion have to be regarded as serious and unprofessional conduct.

But enough of that. On Tuesday night Roy Keane will bid farewell to the Old Trafford faithful safe in the knowledge that in this theatre of dreams, he stands shoulder to shoulder in the pantheon of greats such as Best, Charlton, Law, Robson and Cantona.

Even the prawn sandwich brigade would not dispute the fact that Roy Keane will always have a truly special place at the very heart of Manchester United's history. Certainly for true fans of the club, Roy Keane will always have a special place in their hearts.