Roy Keane reveals hilarious phone call with irate rugby fan after Man Utd red card

Roy Keane has never been shy to speak his mind and the former Manchester United star has never been afraid to go out of his way to do so when criticised, even by a supporter

Roy Keane once called a fan after they wrote a letter to him criticising the former Manchester United captain for getting a red card.

The former Republic of Ireland international had his colleagues in hysterics as detail how he was told he should be like ex-England rugby coach and captain Martin Johnson. With Johnson having been handed his marching orders around the same time for leaving Duncan McRae with broken ribs, Keane wasn’t going to miss his opportunity to respond when the supporter had left their number.

In conversation with Gary Neville, Wayne Rooney, Ian Wright, Jill Scott and rugby star Lawrence Dallaglio, Keane told the story on the Overlap. “I got a letter from a rugby fan,” Keane said.

“I got sent off for United, and I got a letter, and I think the guy was living in Leicester. He was slagging me off, saying ‘you’re disgrace, you’re a thug, you should be more like the rugby players,’ right?

“He said that to me, and he mention Martin Johnson, but the guy left his number. A week earlier Martin Johnson got sent off for breaking somebody’s ribs.

“So I rang this guy, and I said: ‘You’re sending me letters comparing me to rugby, Martin Johnson was sent off for breaking somebody’s ribs.’ He was saying you should be more like him?”

“I’ll tell you what you’d have gone very well in the rugby team, you’d have been fine mate,” Dallaglio responded. “It’s a chance to vent some of that anger out.”

It turns out it’s not the first time Keane has offered his verdict on rugby. On a chance meeting between Manchester United and the British and Irish Lions in 2005 at the Vale Resort, near Cardiff, Keane was asked to give a prediction by a rugby star ahead of their tour of New Zealand.

“I said to Roy ‘you could have been a little bit less brutal’,” Dallaglio recounted. “I knew we were going to lose. I’ve looked around and thought we haven’t got the cavalry, and we’re playing a very good New Zealand side.

“I saw him chatting to a few of the boys and I’m just thinking ‘be nice to them’. One of them asked the question, and he said ‘yeah, you’re going to get beat 3-0. This is before we’d even left to fly to New Zealand and I’m thinking ‘he’s right but he could have said something different.”

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