Saipan

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It’s 2002 and Ireland are making a rare entry to the World Cup. Their golden ticket? Manchester United’s Roy Keane, played here by Éanna Hardwicke, a rising star of stage seen in The Seagull and The Playboy of the Western World. But before that manager Mick McCarthy (Steve Coogan) takes the team to pacific island Saipan, for what turned out to be a disastrous training camp where the two men went to head to head in explosive fashion.

Football films have a quite chequered history on screen, but luckily this tabloid story has been brought together under the careful eye of Ordinary Love and Good Vibrations directors Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn, and from the pen of Paul Fraser, long-time collaborator of Shane Meadows. It manages to capture the headline-grabbing excitement, but also the minute tensions that caused this partnership to explode.