Skipper Keane a doubt for showdown after scan reveals muscle injury

ROBBIE KEANE remains a major doubt just 24 hours before Ireland play their final European Championship qualifier against Armenia.

The Ireland skipper didn’t train yesterday after a scan showed blood on a muscle injury in the back of his leg. Assistant manager Marco Tardelli said he didn’t expect Keane would train today either, admitting: “It is a problem. We are hopeful he will recover but it’s difficult.”

It can hardly have helped the captain that he, along with the rest of the squad, endured a long journey through the night back from Andorra to Dublin on Friday. Before the game, Giovanni Trapattoni had been offered various options – including extending Ireland’s trip by one more night — but instead opted for a three-hour bus journey from Andorra to Barcelona and a flight home from the Catalan capital immediately after the game.

Yesterday, he seemed to admit he’d made a mistake, as the players recovered from an even more complicated journey than had been envisaged. Everything seemed to be going according to plan until weight problems with the plane at Barcelona airport meant the passengers were forced to sit on the flight for an hour before take-off while increasingly frantic attempts were made to find a solution. In the end, three of the team’s skips had to be abandoned on the apron, following which the flight time back to Dublin was further extended by a strong head wind. The squad didn’t touch down in Dublin until 6.45am on Saturday morning, an hour and 15 minutes later than the scheduled arrival.

A public training session on Saturday afternoon at Tallaght Stadium was put back one hour to 3pm and all those who had started in Andorra the previous night remained back at the team hotel for further rest. However, among those training were the three players who had come on as substitutes in Andorra — Shane Long, Stephen Hunt and Keith Fahey — but Tardelli brushed aside the suggestion that they too could have done with additional rest.

“!I was a player for many years and after the match, after worse trips than Andorra, we always trained,” he said. “Training so far here has been very soft. That is normal and [Monday] will be much tougher.”

Tardelli also said he expects two other players who are nursing knocks — Darren O’Dea (knee) and Andy Keogh (Achilles) — should both be available.

Meanwhile, it has emerged the Armenian players have been promised a collective €3 million bonus by their federation should they achieve what would be a historic qualification for the country’s first European Championship finals.