When Mick McCarthy's right-hand man gave me an earful in an airport
Personal criticism is crossing the line but there are plenty in sport who don't like any kind of appraisal
These days, Clinton Morrison pops up on TV most Saturdays during the Premier League season, giving his view on games in progress.
I can't remember the last time I met Clinton, but I do remember one particularly odd encounter.
He's a friendly chap, funny too, and plenty in the media had a lot of time for him.
Clinton made a late surge that got him into the Ireland squad for the 2002 World Cup finals.
He'd made his debut in a friendly the previous August and came on for the last 15 minutes of the torrid play-off second leg against Iran in Tehran.
That was the sum of his competitive experience but Mick McCarthy liked the cut of him and had him pencilled in for his World Cup squad.
Nobody needs reminding that the build-up to Ireland's first game was of the GUBU variety - grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre, unprecedented - and, when Cameroon took the lead, we feared the worst.
But Matt Holland came up with a brilliant equaliser to keep Irish fans dreaming.
Back then, journalists had signed up for a tournament package that saw them travel with the team.
The Cameroon game was in the Japanese city of Niigata. After it, we had to take an internal flight to the team's new base of Chiba.
All reports, reaction and analysis had to be filed that night so the squad were sitting on the plane on the runway for a while before the hack pack arrived.
I showed my ticket to a stewardess and moved down the aisle to find my seat. Then my path was blocked. It was Ian Evans, Mick McCarthy's assistant manager.
Evans was a centre-half for QPR and Crystal Palace in the 1970s. When you played in that position in that decade, you tended to be big and uncompromising.
Centre-halves in that era had nicknames like 'Chopper' and 'Bite Yer Legs'.
Sure enough, Evans was big and uncompromising. He stood there, legs planted far apart, towering over me, eyeballing me for what seemed like an eternity.
Clinton was sitting beside Evans. I caught his eye and he looked as bewildered as myself.
Evans kept up the staring act - he still hadn't said a word - before eventually sitting back down again.
On the short flight to Chiba, I kept turning over the incident in my mind - what was that about? I figured maybe he was just annoyed at reporters delaying take-off. How wrong I was...
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Fifteen days later, Ireland's World Cup adventure ended in another city, in another country. A last 16 defeat on penalties to Spain in Suwon in South Korea.
It had been an exhausting month, one where the Saipan frenzy had meant we were all pushed to the limit as a mini civil war broke out.
All of us were longing for home, but there was quite a trek ahead of us. A long flight from Seoul to Amsterdam, and then a shorter hop to Dublin.
I sat in the departure lounge in Seoul, trying to concentrate on a book when I got a weird feeling that someone was staring at me.
Ian Evans on the Ireland sideline with Mick McCarthy during their time together
Sure enough, I looked up and, in a seat opposite, there was Evans doing just that. Uh-oh.
I tried to concentrate on the book again but he moved across to sit beside me.
"Are you Kieran Cunningham?'' I nodded. "I just want to say I think you're a…." And he used a word that is frowned upon in polite company. He kept eyeballing me for long, long seconds before going back to his seat.
Now this was a time when people took sides. You were either for Mick McCarthy or Roy Keane. I was in the Keane camp though I now think both were equally wrong and equally right…
I'd written plenty in the previous couple of weeks about how McCarthy messed up by not finding a way to keep Keane on board. Then I took my seat on the plane. Who was I sitting beside? Mick McCarthy's brother and daughter. You have to laugh, I suppose.
I figured Evans's attitude was something to do with Saipan too but found out later that was not the case.
As well as being McCarthy's assistant, Evans had doubled up as Ireland Under-21 manager for four years from 1996 to 2000.
He had a dismal record, despite inheriting players who had won European Championships at under-age level under Brian Kerr and came third at the 1997 World Under-20 Championships.
In his last campaign, Ireland's only wins were against Malta and Macedonia. During that campaign, I wrote a column assessing his record and making the case for change, arguing that double jobbing wasn't working.
I found out later from a mutual friend that this was why Evans confronted me in Seoul. It was nearly two and a half years after he'd been moved aside from the Under-21 job by the FAI. It was three years after I'd written a column which I'd long forgotten, but he clearly remembered.
To me, it was staggering that some ancient criticism was on his mind after two huge World Cup games, but it was a reminder that criticism can really sting and there are plenty who never want to forget or forgive.
This all came back to me while listening to Roy Keane recently on the Stick to Football podcast.
He was talking about how he'd ''crossed the line'' in his criticism of Manchester United's Harry Maguire and that he'd since privately apologised to him after bumping into the England man.
"I remember one time I kind of mocked him a little bit and that is definitely out of order,'' said Keane.
He was referring to an appearance on Sky when he mimicked Maguire's voice. He said that pundits should never get personal.
Keane is right on this, and it applies to journalists too.
Mocking a players' voice or his background or his looks should be beyond the pale.
Giving an honest appraisal of the performance of players and managers - even if this means dishing out sharp criticism at times - is part of the job.
Nothing I wrote about Evans was personal, but he took it personally. He's not alone in being like that in sport. It will never change.