Named for the tiny Mariana island in the Philippine Sea that played host to the Irish national football team’s training camp ahead of the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Tokyo, Saipan is Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D’Sa’s fictionalised spin on a sporting travesty that still causes fierce debate: captain Roy Keane’s abrupt departure from the squad following a disastrous confrontation with manager Mick McCarthy. As a stony, serious Keane (an expertly cast Éanna Hardwicke) returns from injury with the expectations of a nation riding on his shoulders, he finds it impossible to get anyone – least of all the Irish Football Federation – to take the team’s chances seriously.
From inadequate training facilities to an undisciplined team, Keane becomes increasingly more irritated, and finds the jovial McCarthy (a chirpy Steve Coogan) offers little in the way of help. McCarthy’s happy-go-lucky attitude to Ireland making it this far and the distance created by his ‘Irishness-in-name-only’ (he was born and raised in England) are fundamentally at odds with how seriously Keane takes the sport; tensions quickly fray as Keane is unwilling to make concessions and McCarthy seems in over his head.
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Ultimately we know how the story ends; Keane bows out before kick-off, preferring the ire of his countrymen for abandonment to potential humiliation on a global stage. Hardwicke does a grand job of articulating the mercurial Keane; Steven Coogan is Steve Coogan, though has the sense to dial down his flabbergasted tendencies. Still it’s hard to make a sports drama where all the action occurs off-pitch – Saipan trundles along but never quite gets the pulse racing. Hardwicke’s magneticism aside, it’s an enjoyable but featherlight affair, though the end credits song choice of hometown heroes Fontaines D.C’s ‘Favourite’ certainly warrants a tip of the hat.