How Roy Keane's namesake rebuilt the legendary Man Utd captain's career in cardboard

Growing up with the Keane name and a United-supporting Irish father meant that Dan was often asked if he had any relation to the former midfielder, and he couldn't resist spinning the occasional yarn.

"I convinced my friend’s dad that he [Keane] was my uncle, and then it was only when I’d seen my friend a few years later, he asked me how my uncle was, and I thought it was a really weird question," he explains. "I completely forgot that I’d actually told him that Roy Keane was my uncle! It was only a couple of people I did it with, but most of the time it didn’t work, and then I completely forgot I’d said it the one time it did!"

That personal connection has naturally shaped how Dan collects, even though he ultimately decided not to support the same team as his father.

"I’m massively into nostalgia, and I think cards is kind of like a way of remembering good times," he says. "I’m a Fulham fan now, but I still have some really fond memories [of United]. I was put in a Roy Keane shirt when I was younger. It was actually cheaper in JJB Sports to get a player’s name than your own name, so we saved a few quid there!

"My dad’s, Irish, to Irish grandparents, he was born here, but my grandparents were into GA, like the hurling and the Gaelic football and stuff like that. So, my dad decided to pick a football team, and Man United was the team that spoke to him, and then Roy Keane was a player around when I was born. So, yeah, just a lot of affection to him, and I think, you can’t necessarily hold a memory in your hands, but you can hold some of the cards that were around when you were growing up watching him."

Pressed on why he chose Fulham over United, Dan explained: "Both my mum and dad are accountants, and they'd work all throughout the summer, and for years, me and my brother were going to all these different summer camps. Eventually one came up, in Surrey, which was to play football every day for eight hours from Monday to Friday, and it was run by the Fulham Community Trust. At the end of it, they’d give you free tickets to go and see Fulham. Growing up in Surrey, I never actually got to go and see Man United play really, because my dad’s - he won't like me saying this - a bit of an armchair fan. I still watch Man United with him today, but after going to Craven Cottage, making the walk from Putney to Craven Cottage and going across the bridge by the river, the club, everything, I just fell in love.

"We went to three or four of those summer camps, so I ended up going to see about four Fulham games. We had a couple of players come and see us, and that just solidified, 'this is definitely my team.' The club picks you."

Owning the ultimate collection of Keane trading cards was never Dan's grand plan, but it quickly became obvious that the United icon would be his main focus in the hobby alongside Fulham. He has also gained a greater appreciation of Keane's unique character since seeing him transition from the pitch to the punditry chair.

"In the same way that the club chooses you, I think your collection chooses you, and that was it with Roy Keane," he says. "When I was starting my collection, I wanted a particular player that I felt something towards. With him, it was the nostalgia aspect, growing up supporting him. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve learned to respect him individually as a person a lot more. He’s very witty, very funny.

"I’ve got family in Ireland that are very similar, kind of quick-witted. And the no-nonsense football style I admire even more so now I’m older than I understood when I was younger. So I think with the second name, and him being a favourite calibre of player, it was pretty simple. I was going to go for Fulham and then I was going to go for Roy Keane. I just happened to pick up some one pound, two pound Roy Keane cards and then it spiralled from there."

One of Topps' most beloved collections, Match Attax, celebrated its 20th anniversary this week, with a Guinness World Record attempt event held at Olympia London to mark the milestone. For so many football fans, the popular trading card game serves as the perfect entry point to collecting, and Dan was no different. He did not use them for their traditional purpose, though, and finding rare Keane cards was not on his mind when ripping those early packs.

"I was born in 1995, so I actually started collecting Pokemon and then turned into Yu-Gi-Oh and then it went into football albums and football stickers," he explains. "But I think the first Match Attax album came out when I was 12. So at that time, I was supporting Fulham but wasn’t necessarily collecting Roy Keane. As a collection, Roy Keane came when I was older.

"The '07, '08, '09, eras of Match Attax, I was probably playing it in the wrong sense. Me and my brother would buy Match Attax - I’m imagining Nicky Butt in a Newcastle shirt, Jay-Jay Okocha and some of those players - from the shop, and then we we would play Top Trumps with them, doing defence versus attack. I wasn’t very good at collecting back then, I was just buying cards to have them."

When Dan eventually began taking a more structured approach to collecting and targeting Keane specifically, he homed in on a period that defined his upbringing as a football fan.

"Sometimes you just buy cards and then you happen to kind of fall into a collection, but then when you think about it more, you want to go towards a certain avenue or a certain era. I really like the early noughties stuff, so anything from 2000 to 2005 is my sweet spot of Keane collecting," he says. "I was too young to really remember the treble season or anything like that; '03, '04 is probably about my prime, when I was really starting to remember football. So many cards from that era I really, really like, and that’s kind of where I put my collecting towards, but I like to tick off lots of different things."

So far, though, the Euro 2024 Pristine Keane card is the only one Dan has tried to give the rainbow treatment. It does not fall into the category of a rare card, but Dan realised there was something special it from the moment it was released.

"There’s a few different reasons. Roy Keane doesn’t tend to have a lot of cards in the Ireland shirt. I think he only had distinctive cards in, the 1994 World Cup and then the 2002 World Cup, which obviously, Saipan and everything that happened there is probably not a highlight of that tournament. And then I saw the checklist come out for Topps Pristine, it was the road to Euro 2024, and it had him in it, in an Ireland shirt," Dan recalls.

"Not all of the shirts were licensed for that particular set, but the Ireland one was. I only bought one card: the green colour match, where the colour of the parallel matches the shirt, which tends to just look really nice. It’s aesthetically pleasing for collectors. So I bought that. It was numbered out of 125 and cost like five quid. It wasn’t very expensive."

That was the first step, and an even more spontaneous one followed that set Dan on a full-blown hunt: "Then I was on an Asian marketplace, and saw the SuperFractor one of one, and I decided to buy it. Normally how it goes with rainbows is collectors will buy the one of one, and then they’ll work their way backwards. And so I was picking up some more here and there, and then I went to the Dublin card show two years ago. I was talking to a collector and was doing a trade for some Evan Ferguson cards that I had. He spotted the SuperFractor and he said he knew someone that had the black one of one, and I’d forgotten that the black one of one existed, which took me back a bit because I realised, 'oh, now I’m going to have to collect two one of ones.'

"He said he knew the collector that bought it, so I messaged the collector at that Dublin card show, and then the following Dublin card show, I was actually able to show the entire rainbow. There was six months leading up before that first Dublin card show, and then there was a full year for the next Dublin card show, which was the 18 months. We went through a bit of a rigmarole to get that card, but it’s my first Roy Keane rainbow, and probably will be my last because it was very expensive to do. I framed it recently and it's sitting on my wall."

Dan could hardly have picked more of a niche section in the football trading card space, and so luck has been just as important to bolstering his collection as the time, effort and expense he has put into the hobby. The two cards most central to his story are testament to that, and they have both received the highest numerical grade awarded by Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA), the ultimate badge of honour for any collector.

"This sort of era of cards, 2001 to 2005, they’re just really difficult to find. I found that the majority of them either are, for whatever reason, in America or they’re in Asia, so a lot of them have turned up in China and Japan," Dan begins when asked about his most cherished individual Keane cards. "But I did go to the Milton Keynes card show, and I saw a match-worn patch of Roy Keane [2001 Upper Deck]. And it was raw, so it was ungraded, and I just decided to grade it because a lot of my Roy Keane cards are graded, and it got a PSA 10.

"That was really, really cool to actually find that at the UK card show, grade it myself, and to get a 10. It’s a match-worn patch of a playing-time era, of him in that shirt, and I think there are only four of these in a PSA 10. I would say that one, and then there’s one from - I think this is the only PSA 10 in the world - again, a UK card show. This one I bought graded, but it was my first Roy Keane autograph [2004 Upper Deck Sign of the Times], and so that meant quite a lot to me. This was probably the most expensive card I bought, which then really catapulted into buying more expensive cards, I would say, from that era especially."

From a purely emotional standpoint, though, Keane's first trading card in the colours of Nottingham Forest, where he spent three years before joining United in 1993, stands out above all the others for Dan: "My favourite Roy Keane card, if anyone ever asks me, is always the 1990 rookie card. It was gifted to me, and then the guy actually put my own social things in the slab. The community is such a big part of the football card space."

The trading card community is tight-knit, and so it is very common for collectors and YouTubers to help each other out. "I’ve had loads of mates that have helped me buy lots of fill-in cards that I need, that have sold me cards, or bought cards with me in mind, thinking that I would like it, and then have pulled my arm and confirmed that I did like it," Dan asserts.

"I’m always trying to buy and look out for things for other people. If someone else has asked me to keep an eye out for this card or this parallel, I keep a little note up on my phone, and every time I’m at a card show, if I see something someone else might like, I normally take a picture and do a deal and then sort it out with them later."

Dan's contact list includes Ethan Payne, also known as Behzinga - a member of the British YouTube group Sidemen. Ethan's 'Behz Collects' channel boasts over 23,000 subscribers, with many of his videos drawing in hundreds of thousands of views, and like Dan, he is a regular at the biggest card shows and industry events.

Ethan is also well aware of Dan's reputation as a Keane super-fan, and when they met at the Topps Flagship 2026-27 Hobby Box launch at the Fanatics Store in London, he handed over a very special gift: a Keane 2025-26 Topps Palatial Man Utd Autograph, numbered to 20.

"That was kind of crazy actually. I had never owned a Palatial card before," says Dan. "I don’t think I own another Roy Keane card with that kit as well, with the colour on it, which is really cool as well. He'd opened up a bunch of Palatials, and just messaged me on Instagram. We sort of follow each other, and I’ve been following his football card journey from when he, Simon [Minter] and Josh [Bradley] started. He’s one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. He’s so down to earth, and he said, 'I’ve got a card for you,' and I said, 'oh, you don’t need to give me anything.' Then he saw me at the event and gifted me that. I was completely blown away."

Dan filmed in Woking, Manchester and Dublin to create a video dedicated to his Keane card collection, which has generated over 6,000 views since going live last month. The comments section is full of praise for Dan's "top-tier storytelling" and he has been commended for "showcasing what the hobby is all about".

One user also wrote: "Very relatable video to watch, I feel influencers should show off their collections more, rather than how much money they make." From a last-minute PSA reveal to an Old Trafford fly-by, Dan has given his followers an intimate look at what it has taken for him to amass such an impressive collection, standing out from other content creators in the space, who tend to favour more generic card opening or box-breaking videos.

"It was important for the video, but it also felt important for me. Just being able to revisit some of those places, like the Woking card show, was kind of a hometown card show that just happened when I was filming" Dan said. "I grew up up around Woking, so the fact that there was a card show there and I was able to reveal some Ireland cards there was really cool.

"Manchester obviously was really important. I had planned on actually doing a PSA reveal in Manchester and it came down to the wire. I think I’d waited about six months for these cards to come back from PSA and I got a text the night before, when I was out for my birthday, saying that they’d arrived and so I messaged my friend and had to get on the late night train to Clapham at 10pm the night before I was going to Manchester to go pick them up so that I could reveal them.

"So that was a further bit of drama, but we stayed in the Trafford Centre, so every time we were going into central we were going past Old Trafford. We went to the football museum there as well, and sort of soaked it all in. I also managed to buy a really cool Topps Chrome Roy Keane card from a friend - black and numbered to 10.

"Then Ireland as well just felt really fitting, being able to show the full rainbow in the Ireland shirt at the Dublin card show. And I went to Atlantic City Collectibles and I showed the guys there. I showed Jason, who’s a huge Irish national team collector and I promised if I ever sell it it would go to him. The community aspect is so big. It's crazy how far it's come and people are welcomed with open arms."

There is a temptation to put channel growth ahead of collecting, but financial gain has never been Dan's main motivation: "Collecting has to come first, because that will quickly make you feel like you enjoy it less if you spend too much money. I’m definitely, 100% a collector first. I think even if I’d stopped doing all of the content, I’d still be collecting things. Collecting is a bit of a gene. My granddad collected postcards, my mum collected stamps. I think you have that bug or a gene that’s passed down."

That bug ensures that Dan is always chasing the next piece of Keane memorabilia, and there is a 'Holy Grail' card set that he now has his eye on: "A big goal would be a set called 2022 Topps Dynasty. It was like quite a high-end set, and I think they had baseball cards and stuff beforehand. I remember being at the Topps flagship store when it was a pop-up in Westfield in White City, and a friend of mine who works for Topps was taking about Dynasty coming to football, so it’s super exciting.

"There's some really, really nice cards, all numbered to 10 or less. And they’ll have an on-card auto, so Roy Keane would have signed it, and then they usually have like a match-worn patch. Some of the patches are like the Man United crest - I don't own anything like that, a lot of the best patches do come out of Topps Dynasty. I think the one-of-one sold for about £7,000, so I don’t think I’ll be going after a one-of-one, but maybe one of the ones numbered to 10, or maybe from some of the later sets, because I think they’ve kept up Dynasty from 2022 all the way to 2026, so there’ll be quite a few, and I think he’s in most of the checklists."

Dan is also hopeful of landing himself some Keane cards from Topps' 2026-27 Flagship set. Fanatics Collectibles has set out to bridge the gap between traditional European card collecting and high-end American-style hobby chasing since acquiring Topps in 2022, and Chrome Classics is one of their most visually appealing sets.

The metallic, retro-bordered cards scratch an itch for collectors like Dan, too. "I'm going after some numbered parallels of the Chrome Keane because they use the old Barclays crest," he says. "That badge is super-nostalgic. I don’t want to say I’m going to do a rainbow for those, because it’s a slippery slope, but if the one-of-one ever surfaces [I'd be interested]."

For Dan, the adrenaline rush of packing or seeking out and buying a card that elevates his collection that bit more never disappears. These glossy pieces of carboard are an invisible bridge across generations, holding the power to turn adults back into wide-eyed children in a matter of seconds.

"I think that’s the core of it," he says. "The market’s definitely changed and you’re not thinking about the market when you’re on the playground. Kids have the opportunity to hit autos now, whereas before they probably didn’t. There were autographs in Match Attax back in the day, but they were so hard to hit, you almost didn’t know that they were in the product. They were so rare. But now you can get a pack of Topps Flagship from Sainsbury’s and you can hit a patch, you can hit an auto, and the kids are buzzing off it.

"But I think that thrill of pulling something big has never changed. I don’t feel like you grow out of the hobby, I feel like the hobby grows with you in different sets and products and things that are coming out. When I was at the Woking card show, I did a collab post with a friend, and he gave me a pack of Match Attax for free. I opened it up when we went for a drink afterwards, and I hit a Lionel Messi 100 club. I’m 31, and that’s the first time I’ve ever hit a Messi 100 club in my life. This guy had given me one pack, and I’d opened it in a pub, wasn’t filming, and that buzz was the exact same as hitting the Topps Chrome one-of-one. The values aren’t the same, but that sort of nostalgia brings you back, and you get that same feeling.

"I don’t really think it’s any different from playing around swapping at all for collectors nowadays. You might not keep your cards in elastic bands and put them in your pocket anymore. You might be using sleeves and top loaders, and maybe the condition matters a bit more, but a trade on the playground is no different to doing a trade at a card show."

There is no end goal for true collectors like Dan, because the hobby is timeless. He doesn't expect to ever possess a finished Keane collection, but that won't stop him chipping away. The reward is always in the search and discovery, not the end result.

"Topps are bringing out new products every year with cards that I like, with Keane in it. I think this Keane collection is life long," he concludes. "There's always a card out there that you don’t even know exists that you find one day and then you see a picture of it, but then tracking it down or finding a collector that has one is, is again a completely different story. I feel like it’ll never finish, until I can’t collect any more because I’m dead."

Topps Match Attax UEFA Club Competitions 2026/27 is available online and in selected retailers. For more information, visit Topps RIPPED and follow @toppsfc for the latest updates.