Ever since we first saw Saipan, in an undisclosed cinema in an undisclosed location (Soho, obviously), we have not been able to get it out of our brains. A sizzling, surreal pressure-cooker drama anchored by towering performances by both Éanna Hardwicke and Steve Coogan. The film, which dramatises the infamous 2002 World Cup training camp bust-up between Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy, is in cinemas right now. To celebrate the release, please tuck into this conversation our own Asad Raza had with Éanna and directors Glenn Lyburn and Lisa Barros D’Sa a little while back, in a hotel that reminded him of a capsized ocean liner filled with the bric-a-brac of a particularly upmarket Oxfam. There’s car park encounters with Coogan, excavating Irish identity, Greek tragedies, and pretending a freezing lough in overcast Belfast was like being in the Pacific Ocean on a summer's day. Enjoy.

Lisa Barros D'Sa:  Why turn Saipan into a film, not a documentary? Well, there have been a couple of great documentaries made about it already. Red Mist was made five years after the incident, which had great archive footage and told the story in that way really well. But the main reason, aside from Glenn being a lifelong football fan who knew the story inside out, was that it was this very pure drama about two characters in this very isolated space who end up in a slow-motion collision course toward each other. And you have this ancient Greek chorus of the press and the public, Irish and global, feeding into the story and magnifying it. It had all the ingredients of a great film already there.

Glenn Leyburn:  You know, the historical context is really important. Ireland had the most successful economy in Europe, and at the beginning of the new millennium, we had an emerging confidence as a nation, and a younger generation of people certainly had a feeling that Ireland could step out of this ‘we're here to make up the numbers’ attitude and really compete. Then this happened, and it split the country, young versus old, those who lived through certain stereotypes versus those who wanted to consign them to history. It felt monumental and a reflection of where we were as a country.

Éanna Hardwicke: I was around five or six when this World Cup happened, and Roy Keane was such a huge presence in my imagination. I'm from Cork, up the road from Mayfield, where he has family, and it was just a huge thing to have one of the greatest footballers in the world be from your county and from your city. But I was hesitant to take on the role prior to reading the script. But then a year went by, and it wasn't what I expected at all. It wasn't a biopic; it was trying to capture this major event through the lens of Ireland as an island, on the biggest global stage, at the World Cup. 

It's a story about two different approaches to the game. Like, take the decision to choose Saipan as a training camp, for instance. It is an island in the middle of the Pacific. You can see all the reasons for choosing it, and you can see all the reasons for not choosing it. And that seems like a very political answer, but I think you do get a sense that an island can mean very different things depending on how you look at it. And this is our mythologised version of the story. 

What I love about the film is when you see those moments of camaraderie and the joy, the team spirit, and that Mick was a brilliant leader of that team. He understood those men, and he was close to them and clearly loved football and clearly loved Irish football. I think Roy shares the same thing. But it's communicated differently, right? 

Glenn: So much of it's about communication. And as Lisa was saying, this could be about football or something completely different, in the end, the core of the film and their relationship is about communication, or miscommunication as it were.

Lisa:  I loved shooting the climactic argument scene. We were in one space with those actors for a day and a bit, and it felt like the most sort of intense, boiling-down-to-its-essence version of what the drama was. We had Steve and Éanna on extraordinary form. We had all the Irish team members as the backdrop watching it unravel. It was so exciting being in the room.

Glenn: For Mick, and obviously with Steve and his tremendous range as an actor, not just as Alan Partridge but in a host of more dramatic roles, we approached it in terms of calibrating how much it was a comedic role, how much a dramatic role, in order to get a fully developed and nuanced version of the man. And Steve understood that completely. It was a joy to be in a room with someone who has that exceptional talent and create a character who felt like the real Mick, and wasn’t a caricature or a villain.

He understood those men, and he was close to them and clearly loved football and clearly loved Irish football. I think Roy shares the same thing. But it's communicated differently, right? 

Éanna: I remember when Steve and I had our first rehearsal, and we met each other in the car park by accident afterwards, we bumped into each other and I was kind of probably staying in the head space of Roy a little bit, and I said, in a very abrupt way, “Oh. Steve. That was good, wasn't it?” and he replied in the same way: “Yeah. Yeah, it was good. Yeah, no, it was good. Good to get a rehearsal in.”

All the nerves I had were sort of bubbling over, and we're standing there, two men in a car park, and I went, “You going to this dinner tonight?”

Steve: “Yeah. No, I think I will. Are you?” 

Me: “Yeah, no, probably. Yeah, I think I will.”

And then we both laughed at each other. Because we realised that this was the scene, the relationship we wanted.

“We'll do this”, we decided. Do this dynamic. Two men in a car park who don't really know how to talk to each other. That was our start point. 

Lisa:  When we were in prep, we always talked about it as structured like a Greek tragedy because within their characters, they have a point of view and an identity, which means they're never going to be able to do anything other than come up against each other. 

Éanna: The conflict between the two really comes down to differences in how Irish people perceived themselves at the time. The idea of us being a junior partner in most things we do. The sense of not seeing yourself as much of a nation as others. Which couldn't be further from Ireland on the world stage, culturally speaking. I think that was a part of the Saipan debate, especially when you look at how the story was discussed in Ireland.

There was a sense from an older generation that this was disrespectful. That Roy didn’t comport himself in the right way. And there was a younger generation going well, “Why shouldn't we quite forcibly demand the best? Roy Keane's an excellent footballer. He demands excellence, so why can't we be excellent?” We should know that we’re good enough to stand alongside all of these ‘bigger’ nations.

Roy Keane's an excellent footballer. He demands excellence, so why can't we be excellent? We should know that we’re good enough to stand alongside all of these ‘bigger’ nations

Lisa:  Excellence, yes. Exactly. And that goes back to Jack Charlton's time with Ireland, which definitely had an incredibly positive impact, but it felt like this was a different era and different things should be expected. That we shouldn’t just go along for the ride. But then there's also Mick, and I think this was something that Steve was really tuned into, and which forms a voice in that story that we don't normally hear as well, which is the Irish diaspora, you know? He was mocked for being a plastic Paddy, but his parents had to leave for economic reasons. He was still tied to the country and felt connected to it, and he ended up leading his country in its most successful time.

Éanna: One of my favourite memories from shooting was that we got together on a pitch in Belfast, and got to know all the guys who were gonna play this team, and we all had a day or two to get to know each other, kick a ball around, discover who could kick a ball and who couldn't. 

I was very much hanging in the balance there. And I met some great footballers, like Oliver Coopersmith (Jason McAteer) and Jack Hickey (Niall Quinn), lads who actually play to a decent level. It was amazing—and Stephen Jones, who plays the assistant coach. Steven's a really, really good footballer.  So they were perfect for their roles, and it meant that all of a sudden, you're looking around, going, oh, we feel like a real team.

For me, that was what is great about a film set, the togetherness, like people getting up at five in the morning, rocking up to a car park, eating breakfast out of a cardboard box, and then us all having to pretend to be on a tropical island as well.

Glenn: The banana boat was shot in a lake in Ireland, which is miraculous that the sun was shining. So when they were jumping off into that water, it was very, very cold.

Lisa:  The island setting helped us to explore ideas of cultural social identity. You go away to an isolated place, and you end up facing yourself. It's a self-revelation, and I think that one of the lovely things about the script was that it felt as though this island was almost like going through the looking glass for these Irish players and team, where they confront things about themselves on the other side of the world.

Éanna: Working with Steve was brilliant. He's so gracious and just like brilliant to be around, and it really relaxed me. I kept thinking I was going to be found out, but he helped me through it and allowed me to share that space with him. I reckon I tried to keep my cool too much for the first two weeks, being very, very curt and short with him to keep that distance. And then towards the end of the shoot, I let myself go, “So go on, tell me about The Trip.”

For me, so much of the film came down to the idea of like a kid's love affair with the ball. Kids playing Sunday league at the age of five or six, and that being the root of all of it, and then to be at the end of that sort of career or to be coming to the end of it and to basically have put your body on the line for so long you're exhausted and a wreck, and to know that, to persevere and continue at the highest level, it costs you more and more each year.

I think there's something profoundly kind of moving about that because it's about human courage. And it's weird, I get emotional talking about it, but I was such a fan of Roy’s before starting it, and I was even more a fan of him after because I thought, to put yourself in that place of discomfort. The courage there knowing that it costs you something, and that you're far from home, and the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been, and knowing that there's loads that's going wrong. But to do it anyway. It’s really kind of brilliant.

He’s resolutely himself for better or for worse, really.  And so is Mick. And they're both brilliantly authentic figures in an age where it’s becoming harder to be that. For football now, it's become very hard to be authentic because there's a huge PR management around it. But these two are authentically themselves, and it’s what drove them apart, in the end.

Saipan is out in all good cinemas from today. Take your friends, take your family, take your enemies, take your barber. You can stick all your other films up your bollocks.