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A handful of sports journalists travel with Ireland’s football team to cover preparations for the 2002 World Cup. They expect a week of low drama but find themselves at the centre of one of the biggest stories in Irish sporting history – Roy Keane’s infamous exit from Ireland’s World Cup squad, following an explosive row with team manager Mick McCarthy.

The journalists travelled over 7,000 miles to the tiny island of Saipan in Japan, for what was to be an easy week of rest and relaxation for the Irish national football team. While they were still acclimatising to the time zone and climate during their first few days, disaster struck as Manchester United superstar and Ireland captain Roy Keane exploded with frustration at the facilities, lack of preparation and poor team management.

Reporting the shocking breaking news fell to just a few Irish journalists who had travelled to Saipan to cover the story, through a series of hard-won interviews, occasional chance encounters and one all-important tip-off from a hotel porter.

Their work uncovered a deep rift between Roy Keane and team manager Mick McCarthy, first opened a decade earlier on a trip to New York. Now the rift deepened as Roy Keane found himself preparing for the biggest sporting competition of his career on a rock-hard training pitch with no footballs.

Over the course of a few days, tension turned into rage as Roy threatened to quit the team, before a changing room row led to him being officially dismissed and sent home by McCarthy.

Journalists Stephen Watson, Tony O’Donoghue and Gabriel Egan reveal how they secured the key interviews to make sense of the drama for distraught Irish football fans back home.