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Your support makes all the difference.Roy Keane has revealed the shocking details of a drunken fight he had with then-Manchester United team-mate Peter Schmeichel in Hong Kong in 1998, leading manager Alex Ferguson to label the pair "a disgrace to the club".
The incident, which happened during the club's pre-season tour of Asia, left the Danish goalkeeper with a black eye after he was head-butted by Keane.
Keane documents the scrap in his new autobiography, The Second Half, which is published this week.
"I had a bust-up with Peter when we were on a pre-season tour of Asia, in 1998, just after I came back from my cruciate injury. I think we were in Hong Kong. There was drink involved," wrote Keane in the book.
Keane revealed that there had been tension between him and Schmeichel for years because of "football reasons", leading to the fight which had been "refereed" by team-mate Nicky Butt.
"He said: 'I've had enough of you, It's time we sorted this out.' So I said 'Okay' and we had a fight. It felt like 10 minutes. There was a lot of noise - Peter's a big lad.
"I woke up the next morning. I kind of vaguely remembered the fight. My hand was really sore and one of my fingers was bent backwards.
"Nicky Butt had been filling me in on what had happened the night before. Butty had refereed the fight. Anyway, Peter had grabbed me, I'd head-butted him - we'd been fighting for ages."
Keane, now assistant manager at Aston Villa, said that Ferguson pulled the players into his office on the first day back at the training ground, and told them they had woken up club legend Sir Bobby Charlton, who had travelled on the tour as an ambassador.
"He told us that we were a disgrace to the club, and that we'd woken Bobby Charlton up, that Bobby had come out of his room and seen us.
After the dust settled, however, Keane said that he had no ill feelings towards Schmeichel as the 'keeper took responsibility for the clash, and told a press conference that he suffered the black eye in a training ground accident.
"Peter took responsibility for the fight, which was good. I admired him for it. But Sir Bobby could have tried to break it up."
Roy Keane: The Second Half, published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, £20. www.orionbooks.co.uk
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