Football coach Robbie Keane’s wife, Claudine Keane, has written to Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald to request a meeting to talk about a smear campaign that she claims has endangered her family, reports Sunday World.
During the Israeli-Hamas war, Ms. Keane, a mother of two children and former model, has been active on social media, supporting her husband from online threats and criticism for leading Israeli side Maccabi Tel Aviv.
She voiced her displeasure with social media remarks made by a Sinn Féin press officer and Chris Andrews, a former Sinn Féin TD who lost his Dáil seat last month but is currently standing for the Seanad, both online and in her letter to the party leader, reports Sunday World.
Ms. Keane said that the family has received threatening messages as a result of Sinn Féin tweets about her husband, including claims from individuals claiming to know the Keanes’ residence and the school where their kids go.
After leading the Israeli squad to the Europa Conference League’s round of 16, winning the league cup and the Israeli Premier League, Robbie Keane left the Israeli club one year into a two-year contract last summer, reports Sunday World.
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Despite criticism from certain Irish outlets, Mr. Keane, who took over as manager in June 2023, claimed he had stayed in his position until the conclusion of the season because he had a “duty of care” to the players and his management team, who had relocated to Israel to work with him.
When Keane was asked by the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) to provide caps to the Irish team before matches against Finland and England in November of last year, criticism of his time in Israel was rekindled, reports Sunday World.
Mr. Andrews called the caps presentation “extremely disappointing” in response to an FAI post on X. He said Robbie Keane was involved in “sportswashing genocidal Israel and apartheid.”
Luke O’Riordan, a Sinn Féin press officer and media officer for League of Ireland team Bohemian FC, republished Chris Andrews’s article on X. Last year, the Dublin club played a friendly match against the Palestinian women’s team in Dalymount Park, demonstrating their strong support for Palestinian issues, reports Sunday World.
When a Sinn Féin activist in Wexford was exposed as the creator of a “Pee O’Neill” Twitter account that made derogatory remarks about Ms. Keane and others in 2020, he resigned from the party.
Sinn Féin TD Eoin Ó Broin claimed at the time that if the activist hadn’t quit, the party would have expelled him, reports Sunday World.
In light of the fact that Mr. Andrews was previously exposed as the author of an anonymous Twitter account that targeted members of the Fianna Fáil party, which he was then a member of, Claudine Keane questioned Mr. Ó Broin in recent days how Sinn Féin could back Mr. Andrews’s Seanad candidacy.
Mr. Andrews was referred to by Ms. Keane as a “notorious troll,” reports Sunday World.
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