Another Keane shameful red-card exit

Whether Keane saw it that way is a different matter.

Sir Alex Ferguson certainly didn't.

As his bellicose skipper made another shameful red-card exit from a North-East game, Ferguson flew into a touchline rage over Quinn's intervention.

The United boss appeared to advise Sunderland's amiable player-coach to go forth and multiply.

Having been critical of Keane's conduct when he was banished from the Republic of Ireland's World Cup squad this summer, Quinn might reflect that, all things considered, consoling his erstwhile international teammate wasn't the smartest move.

There again, neither was it Keane's when he smashed his right elbow into the head of Jason McAteer, once one of his closest colleagues in the Ireland camp, in the dying moments of Saturday's explosive encounter at the Stadium of Light.

It seems these days, more than ever, that Keane's raison d'etre is to self-destruct.

His World Cup disgrace was followed by revelations in his autobiography that he deliberately attempted to injure Alf-Inge Haaland as an act of revenge in a Manchester derby.

For that admission, Keane faces an imminent FA charge.

Now there will be more paperwork bearing the midfielder's name at Soho Square.

Ferguson, the manager who repeatedly defends the indefensible where Keane is concerned, has warned that United will consider an appeal against their captain's third red card in the North-East in two-and-a-half years; he was sent off for slapping Newcastle skipper Alan Shearer in the face last season and was also dismissed at St. James' Park in February 2000.

But TV replays provide damning evidence of Keane's guilt and referee Uriah Rennie could scarcely have been nearer the incident when McAteer was felled.

It was a further measure of retribution from Keane, who had earlier reacted furiously and been restrained by Mr Rennie after being wrestled then hacked to the ground by the equally-belligerent McAteer.

Ferguson, however, dismissed Keane's assault on McAteer as "innocuous'' and added: "The way he (McAteer) went down, you would have thought he had been shot in the head.

"My gut feeling is it was very soft. I don't think Roy swung an elbow - he put an arm across his face. We'll have to review it to see whether we appeal or not.

"The first tackle by McAteer on Roy was a bad one and far more serious, and the referee should have acted on that. Roy lost his temper there.''

The protagonists, not surprisingly, declined to comment as did Quinn, who was only on the field as a late substitute for Sunderland's debutant goal hero Tore Andre Flo.

Club record signing Flo, whose fee is for some reason a closely-guarded secret on Wearside - Rangers claim they received £6.75m - struck in the 70th minute to salvage an ultimately deserved point for Peter Reid's side.

It was three minutes after Flo's equaliser, in which McAteer played no small part, that the Sunderland midfielder's first flare-up with Keane occurred.

For that, McAteer ought to have been booked. When he was cautioned a further three minutes later for a separate incident, United felt it was he who should have made the long walk.

Subsequent events meant that Flo's heroics were somewhat overshadowed in the aftermath of this needle match.

The point Sunderland managed to earn was tangible reward for the tenacity, vigour and adventure they exhibited after the break.

Before then, however, United largely ran rings round them in an embarrassingly one-sided first half.

Welsh wing wizard Ryan Giggs, who scored in United's 3-1 win on Wearside last season, cast his spell again when he latched on to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's header to drill a left-foot drive into the far corner of Thomas Sorensen's net.

After McAteer, scorer of Sunderland's winner at Leeds three days earlier, had scorched the fingertips of United keeper Roy Carroll with a 30-yard thunderbolt, Keane fired over at the other end from a great position on the edge of the penalty area.

Reid exhorted his defence to step up and deny United the space they were exploiting to good effect.

"For the first 25 minutes, I didn't think we wanted to be part of what was a tremendous game,'' said the Sunderland boss.

"I thought we went a bit deep early on. We stood off and watched them. If you give Manchester United that much time and space, you are going to get murdered.

"But, for an hour, it was a really good contest. At half-time, I just told the lads to have a go.''

Maybe McAteer took that a little too literally, but it was he who helped bring about the breakthrough for Sunderland, albeit in scrappy fashion.

The classy Claudio Reyna played him in and after Carroll blocked, Laurent Blanc handled McAteer's shot on the line before the ball brushed the near post and he knocked it back in for Flo to fire home from close range off the underside of the bar.

Sorensen, who performed a vital block from Keane, also had to make a point-blank save to foil Ruud van Nistelrooy seven minutes from time after a Phil Babb miskick.

The feud between Keane and McAteer then erupted at the end.

Reid said he "honestly'' didn't see the incident which led to Keane's sending-off.

Nor could he enlighten the media on Quinn's comments to Keane. "You better ask Niall that one,'' he said.

Perhaps we'll never know.

Read more about Sunderland here.