GORDON STRACHAN HAD spent the worst part of four days in bed with a virus.
When he wasn’t shaking or sweating, sporadic hallucinations kept him company.
As he began to emerge from the worst of it, his wife came into the room with some news.
Robbie Keane had signed for Coventry City from Wolverhampton Wanderers.
The fee was £6 million, making the newest Ireland international the most expensive teenager in British football history.
This was August 1999, seven years after the Premier League was established. As it celebrates the 30-year anniversary this month, Keane’s transfer remains one of the pivotal moments from an Irish perspective.
It helped to truly catapult him onto the world stage.
Within a year of his arrival at Highfield Road, Inter Milan made their move.
But in the summer before the new Millennium, Coventry were a club with big ambitions – although they would eventually drop out of the top flight a year later, and have remained their since.
Keane had been a central figure to the optimism.
Former club chairman Bryan Richardson had taken matters into his own hands to secure the deal, bypassing the agents involved and driving from Coventry to Wolverhampton to speak directly with the Molineux hierarchy in order to thrash out terms.
Once finalised, he visited Strachan at his home just as the Scot was beginning to get to grips with the hallucinations that came with the virus.
“I lost track of what time it was, what day it was even,” Strachan later recalled.
“I thought it was pie in the sky stuff but the chairman was always willing to take a chance, and when my wife came up to tell me that the deal was done a few days later, I really thought it was a dream.
“I went back to bed for another day and when I came around again I realised it was right, we got Robbie. That was the start of it all.”
Keane made an immediate impression on his new teammates, among them the veteran Gary McAllister.
He was 35 when the Tallaght native bound through the gates. The former Leeds United midfielder had won the last top-flight First Division title in 1992, before the new Premier League changed the face of the game, and it seemed as if his career was coming to a natural conclusion.
Keane’s influence energised everyone, most notably McAllister, and a move to Liverpool provided the kind of Indian summer he could never have envisaged previously.
“Do you know when you just find somebody who you click with?” the Scot explained previously. “I fed off Keano. It was fantastic for me. I’d come from Leeds to Cov. We won the league there so I’d seen that hunger and desire, Keano had special ability; like a young Gary Speed or David Batty.
“When I think of Keano, I think of [Eric] Cantona because he had the maturity and a confidence of a Cantona at a young age. He played with a swagger and was on a mission from the start. Then ‘boom’, he was gone. It was a whirlwind.”
The term of affection McAllister uses for Keane is “gallus”. “It’s a Glasgow word, someone who backs themselves and has swagger.”
He certainly had that, winning player of the month in his first season in the top flight and ending his Premier League career with 126 goals in 349 appearances.
While he will be remembered most for his time at Tottenham Hotspur, not to mention an ill-fated spell at Liverpool sandwiched in between, it was at Coventry where his talents among the elite first blossomed having shown that initial promise at Wolves.
“There are some people who suck the life out of a room and a football pitch, Robbie was not one of those people,” Strachan said of his former striker. “As soon as he came he radiated the place with his natural enthusiasm.”
Barry Quinn, who captained the Ireland U-18 side which won the European champions in 1998, was already at Coventry when he was joined by his close friend.
“It was the most vibrant time I can remember. I still speak to people over here now who talk about those days with him and Gary McAllister. It was the glory era for the club and Robbie was like our Galactico.”
Prior to Keane’s arrival in the Premier League, Aston Villa boss John Gregory insisted he was not worth more than £5m.
Alex Ferguson was also reported to have derided the fee involved at a supporters’ function, declaring he would pay just £500,0000 for the teenager, and he would need two years in Manchester United’s reserve side.
A furious Fergie later insisted his comments were misrepresented, and when Keane scored a brace on his debut – 23 years ago this Sunday – against Derby County it seemed clear he belonged at the top.
Ten more followed that season – just two fewer than international teammate Niall Quinn at Sunderland – before he departed for San Siro.
It all happened so quickly in one rapid-fire season at Coventry that maybe it did feel like a dream for Strachan.