Captain Robbie hails team effort

It took Ireland a little longer than many would have expected to entirely kill off the Faroe Islands’ paltry challenge, but on the night he made a record 126th appearance for Ireland, the script was always going to centre around Robbie Keane.

Much of the talk prior to kick-off had centred around the captain becoming the nation’s longest serving representative, but it was a record of another kind — his second international hat-trick, to bring his overall goal tally to 59 — which held far more importance at the end of an evening where Ireland got the job done despite an, at times, ponderous overall performance.

Some eyebrows were raised when Keane declared on Thursday that he has another five or six years to come before he considers hanging up his boots, but the proof that he can still do the business was there for all to see last night as his hat-trick kept Ireland in the hunt for second place in Group C.