Robbie keen to produce goods

YOU have to suspect that if Robbie Keane needed any further motivation to speed up the healing process on his injured calf, it would have been not only finding himself in an ice chamber cooled to minus 120 degrees – but discovering that, for company, he had former heavyweight boxer Frank Bruno singing ‘Danny Boy’.

“It was a bit bizarre,” says Keane of the cryotherapy sessions which helped ensure that he could make his comeback to football some two weeks ahead of schedule. “You’d do two sessions a day, go in for four minutes, come out, get on the bike and then back in for another few minutes. And you don’t want to be doing any longer than that – trust me!”

Keane pulled the muscle in his first appearance for West Ham in January, a game in which he got on the score-sheet against Blackpool, but although – perhaps unwisely – he turned out for the Hammers again in their next match against Birmingham City, he was prematurely forced out of the fray and sidelined for six weeks in the course of which he also missed Ireland’s 3-0 friendly win against Wales.