Robbie at 40 takes the plaudits
Ireland’s all-time leading scorer might have just hit the 40 mark but it’s the five he has grabbed for his country in World Cup Group 8 which were uppermost in the minds of his relieved and grateful team-mates as, in the game’s aftermath, they queued up to pay tribute to the Spurs striker.
“He’s been fantastic in this campaign,” said his fellow Tallaght man, Richard Dunne. “Every goal has been an important one. He’s just been great, a real leader for the side and hopefully his goals will take us all the way.”
“Robbie is the main man in our team,” said Glenn Whelan. “He’ll score a lot of goals at the right times as well. He’s a great captain and he played his role on Saturday night. I don’t think many people thought he could be a captain because he plays up front but he doesn’t stop speaking, he’s always pushing on and everybody sees the workload he puts in. He puts in a great shift every game.”
“If you want someone on the end of a chance, it’s Robbie,” was Shay Given’s testimonial. “That’s 40 now for Ireland and he’s streets ahead of every other goalscorer, It’s fantastic for him. He’s scored so many important goals and he’s scored another one against Cyprus. They say the hardest part of football is putting the ball in the goal and Robbie has got a great knack for sticking the ball away at the right time and getting massive, vital goals for his country.”
And, as far as Damien Duff was concerned, it was just business as usual for his old mate in the GSP Stadium.
“He did great but then he’s been doing that all throughout his club career and international career so it’s no surprise,” said the man who provided the assist for Keane’s 40th for his country.
But perhaps Sean St Ledger summed up the striker’s winning contribution best. “Robbie produced another magic moment,” said the Preston centre-half of the goal which salvaged an unconvincing performance and turned a draw which would have felt like a defeat into a victory worth celebrating for the Irish players and supporters alike.
Because, in truth, if Keane hadn’t found the back of the net, that five-and-a-half hour, middle-of-the-night flight from Larnaca to Shannon after the game — with Giovanni Trapattoni and Marco Tardelli relocated to economy class in the wake of ‘planegate’, by the way — would have felt a whole lot longer.
And Richard Dunne, for one, made no effort at hiding his relief that a difficult night ended with a sense, if not of outright joy, then at least of mission accomplished.
“We were just saying after the game that it’s a horrible place to come, I’ve never enjoyed it, so just to get out with the three points was the main thing,” said the defender. “I mean, it was just a battle, and there was no real great football played until the last bit.”
Asked if, after the Cypriots had cancelled out Ireland’s early advantage, Dunne had thought, ‘here we go again’, the defender smiled and replied: “There’s enough people thinking that outside the squad. We’re a stronger team mentally than before so it was a case of ‘right, they’ve scored, now let’s shut up shop for a bit and make sure that if there is another goal, it’s ours’. It took a long time but, thankfully, we got it in the end.”
Dunne believes that there is a less anxiety about Ireland now as reflected in the fact that their football showed patience rather than panic in the decisive late phase of Saturday’s game.
“We probably started knocking the ball long too early and rushing things and, it was a case of just being patient and waiting,” he observed, “because, with 15 minutes to go, there’s going to be more chances in the game. Once we started playing the ball around, we looked a much better team and were really in control of the game.”
To the increasingly popular suggestion that Trapattoni is a lucky manager, Dunne shrugged his shoulders and said: “Who cares? Once we get the results, that’s it. You can say it’s luck, but, the players in the squad are after working their nuts off for the last few days and if you work hard, you make your own luck.”
Dunne’s defensive colleague Sean St Ledger was relishing another big result on the road.
“There was just a massive buzz in the dressing room afterwards,” he said. “You saw that too in the way the players went to the supporters at the final whistle. The support was magnificent and to hold on for three points was magnificent. The last time Ireland went to Cyprus, they lost 5-2, and obviously it was a depressing result. The main thing was to go there and get a win. I don’t think a draw would have been good enough. But, realistically now, we’ve got a chance of winning the group.
“The Italy game should be amazing. Italy play Bulgaria on Wednesday and from our point of view it’s a great game because they could take points off each other. We’ll just have to let that be and concentrate on the Italy game. I’ve never played at Croke Park and it’s going to be some atmosphere.”
Finally, Robbie Keane, expressed his own joy at grabbing the all-important goal.
“As a striker you get judged on scoring goals. I could be unbelievable outside the box linking the play up, but if I don’t score goals, people will start questioning me. I always want to score as many goals as I can in my career, and lucky enough for me, I got another on Saturday.”
And though South Africa might be next up for the Irish, thoughts naturally can’t help turning already to the mouth-watering prospect of Italy at Croke Park next month.
“In our backyard we’re always confident that we can beat anyone and we’ve given ourselves a good stepping stone now,” said Keane. “People expected Italy to win the group but at this stage we definitely want to win it If we get second, so be it, but we want top spot and there’s no reason why we can’t. Obviously it depends on Italy and whether they drop some points on Wednesday (against Bulgaria), but if they do, we have a real chance.”
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