Given his impact on the world of football, it's hard to imagine a time before Roy Keane. Whether as an indomitable captain for Manchester United or a sneering pundit in recent years, Keane has long been one of the most recognisable people in the game.
Yet there was a time when not even his own team-mates had a clue who the Irishman was. Indeed, when the midfielder made his Nottingham Forest debut in August 1990, at Anfield no less, his dressing room peers didn't know his name before the game kicked off.
“We were playing Liverpool away, and this young kid was sitting on the bus,” former Forest right-back Brian Laws tells FourFourTwo exclusively. “Brian Clough would regularly take kids with us to get experience. I don’t think anyone spoke to him – no one knew who he was.
"We got to Anfield,” continues Laws, “and, as I thought, he was just pushing the skips into the dressing room and helping to put the kit out. Halfway through, he was putting the No.7 shirt out when Cloughie stopped him and said, ‘Now, son, I want you to try that shirt on.’ We all started laughing, and this poor lad was embarrassed.
"He reluctantly put it on, as though he wanted to get it off as quickly as possible. Cloughie said, ‘You look a million dollars – you look so good, you’re playing’. We still thought it was a wind-up, but he was deadly serious.
"He said to me, ‘You look after him: he’s playing right wing’. I thought, ‘What? I’m playing against John Barnes, and now I’ve got a rookie playing in front of me?’ I introduced myself. I didn’t even know his name – I had to ask him. I said, ‘Look, Roy, keep it simple and I’ll try to talk you through it’. But within five minutes of kick-off, Roy had stamped on Barnes, taken out another player, and when John was on the floor he just went, ‘F**k off’ in his face! There were five minutes of me looking after Roy, then he looked after me for the rest of the game.
“He was like a rat up a drainpipe, all over the place. It can be frightening to go out there at Anfield, but he had no fear. He didn’t care who he was playing against: he would have a go at them. What a debut.”
Barnes wouldn't be the last player to find himself on the receiving end of Keane's ire. From that moment on, the whole world knew who Roy Keane was.
