Steven Reid: Trust me, Keane furore will have no impact on players

I wake up in the morning and my head is spinning around. A good night has just turned into a bad morning. You are talking about a serious hangover here. Worse again, my children, Isla and Harry, are talking about hunger and how they want their daddy to fix them some breakfast.

So I get up, throw some clothes on and head down to the local supermarket. I'm feeling the worse for wear, and my mood doesn't pick up when I see that Roy Keane, who lives in the same town as me, is further down the aisle, getting the groceries in.

What I do next is bizarre. I check back and hide behind a display of discount Cornflakes, hoping Roy doesn't see me. I'm feeling the way I used to as a kid if I thought my mum or dad would find out I had been out drinking.

This makes no sense. I am a grown man. Yet I am embarrassed by the prospect of being 'caught' with a smell of alcohol on my breath.

This is the effect Roy Keane can have on people. I don't profess to know him well, even if I shared a dressing-room with him for Ireland. But that day, for some bizarre reason, I didn't want him to know I'd been out on the town.

Why is it that I behave differently around him than I do around others? It is because there is an aura around him, one he admits he has played up to over the years? As a player, it suited him to have a persona which frightened opposing players.

Nosed

I don't know what happened on Wednesday afternoon in the hotel. I haven't nosed around, asking lads in the squad.

What I do know is that people react differently when Roy Keane is around. Men who are ordinarily chatty, go quiet. Over the years, I have seen some fans try to provoke him and have also witnessed plenty of fans want a piece of him.

He attracts attention. He creates news.

These things happen in football. I have been in dressing-rooms where players square up to each other. I have seen fans berate players and the player give it back. Yet, largely, no one ever finds out. It stays quiet.

But when Roy Keane is involved, nothing remains a secret. Had this been another member of the Ireland back-room team who the fan had confronted, we'd probably never have heard of the incident.

But Keane's name makes an impact. What impact will this incident have on the players?

None. At. All. You'd be amazed how little they will care. Us footballers can be simple enough creatures when our game-heads are on. All we think about is our next performance and little else.

They will be aware of what happened, alright, but they won't be scouring the newspapers for information. Most of the players avoid press stuff in the week of a big match. But they know the incident will be made to fit a certain agenda. Lose tonight and the defeat will be pinned on what happened in the lobby. Win and some people will claim it was a welcome distraction.

Yet I know they won't be distracted. I know because in 2002, Roy was involved in an even bigger row with Mick McCarthy. And as a young player eagerly awaiting to play in the World Cup, I sat there wondering what on earth had just taken place.

That row was just mad. But I quickly forgot about it. So did the other players. They were thinking about the World Cup, not what people may have been writing in newspapers or what the public reaction was back in Ireland.

We don't get bogged down in detail or the outside world. We get on with our lives. This bunch of Irish players will be no different. They will be hungry for the result.

And bizarre as this may sound, all this publicity is good for the team. Since Roy and Martin O'Neill have come in, the buzz has returned to the international scene.

Under Giovanni Trapattoni, it had gone stale and stagnant.

Now it is the complete opposite. You saw that during the summer when everyone made themselves available for at least some part of the end-of-season games. Normally, players view trips like that as a pain in the arse.

No one pulled out, though. I had heard a whisper that O'Neill had said, 'look you are under no pressure to attend but if you don't make it, I can't promise that you will start the qualifiers'. The subsequent roll call showed no one was playing truant.

Yet if Ireland have been revived under O'Neill and Roy, the same can be said for Scotland under Gordon Strachan. They, like us and Poland, have hit form, so this group is now wide open.

Scotland need a win here. We don't. After winning in Georgia and drawing in Germany, we have some savings in the bank. The pressure is off, to an extent. Scotland don't have that luxury.

It promises to be a cracker, with both teams in form and sideshows going on around the game: the row over tickets, the return to Celtic Park of O'Neill, Strachan, Roy Keane, Robbie Keane and Aiden McGeady.

Event-filled

Throw in what Gordon McQueen had to say about McGeady and James McCarthy and you have the basis for an event-filled night.

Adding further fuel to the fire is the fact so many players know one another well. Trust me, the texts will be flying between both squads. You have six players from Derby involved, as well as team-mates at Everton and Sunderland coming up against one another.

The text messages will be endless, guys trying to find out what the team will be. You get that all the time. And you lie through your teeth all the time.

"Who is in your defence tomorrow, Reidy?" I was asked once, via a text, by a clubmate prior to an Ireland international. "Paul McGrath, Tony Cascarino and Mick McCarthy," I replied.

The players will give nothing away in terms of information. And if Ireland give nothing away for the opening 45 minutes then I believe a victory is possible.

The loss of McCarthy and Glenn Whelan will hurt, and the presence and pace of Ikechi Anya on the wing, is something for Ireland to be concerned about.

But this team is on a roll under O'Neill and Keane. A win is there for us but a draw is the more probable outcome.