Robbie Keane - let's be careful about what we wish for

Sometimes he can divide opinion in a manner not unlike his namesake Roy, but there can be no doubting the legacy that Robbie Keane will leave behind him when the Tallaght terrier finally calls it a day with international football.
 

Following the international retirements of Shay Given and Damien Duff after a disastrous European Championships in Poland last summer, it has been suggested that Keane might have followed.
 

There are large sections of the Irish support that is unconvinced by Keane’s contribution and who believe that the Dubliner should have quit and let the new generation step into the breach.
 

Tonight’s crunch Group C qualifier against Austria in Dublin will provide us with some insight into what life after Keane will be like – but Irish fans should be wary about what they wish for. The numbers should be enough to convince the unwashed – but there is something about Keane that just doesn’t endure some.
 

Keane will turn 33 in July and won’t be committing to the punishing journey from his Los Angeles base for too much longer.
 

The clamour for change should come with some cautionary statistics: Shane Long has scored 8 goals in 34 caps; Jon Walters has hit two in 16; Simon Cox has netted just 3 in 23 appearances; while Conor Sammon has yet to score, though has just two caps to his name; and those who believe Wes Hoolahan to be the ‘future’ should be mindful that the Norwich City man will be 31 in May.
 

For all his faults, Keane’s goalscoring record for Ireland is impressive. He has hit 54 goals to be Ireland’s top scorer by some distance. His tally dwarfs the 21 of his nearest challenger, Niall Quinn, and the 20 of Frank Stapleton that for so long was the mercury line in Irish football statistics.
 

It was Mick McCarthy who first blooded Keane. He became the youngest Irish international since Jimmy Holmes played against Austria in 1971 when he was sent on as a substitute by Mick McCarthy against the Czech Republic on March 25th 1998.
 

That night in Olmouc Damien Duff, Mark Kinsella, Rory Delap, Graham Kavanagh and Alan Maybury all made their Ireland debuts. Although Gary Breen gave them the lead, Ireland lost 2-1, with Vladimir Smicer and Edvard Lasota on target.
 

It was Ireland’s first glimpse of Robbie Keane, the senior international. “You just knew from day one that he’d be special,” said Gary Kelly, Ireland’s right-back that night.
 

“He was just one of those special players. When he got his chance he shot and he was always trying to do something amazing on the ball. With Robbie on the pitch, you always knew that you’d get a chance.”
 

On October 14th 1998, Keane scored his first Ireland goal. He netted a brace in a 5-0 win over Malta in a Euro 2000 Qualifier at Lansdowne Road. At the time, Quinn was still chasing Stapleton’s record. RTE’s soccer correspondent, Tony O’Donoghue, interviewed Quinn after the game and he predicted big things for the young boy, whose cartwheels that evening in Ballsbridge would become a trademark.
 

“Well, I’m trying to get Frank Stapleton’s record and this guy could double it – he could get  40 goals,” Quinn responded. His comments were considered ‘reckless’ in the studio, but before long it was clear that Quinn’s prophecy would come to pass.

Keane memorably netted in September 2000 as Ireland scored a 2-2 draw against Netherlands in Amsterdam, grabbing a crucial point that would, after Jason McAteer’s epic winner the following year against the Dutch in Dublin, send Ireland into a play-off with Iran to get to the World Cup.
 

Keane struck one of Ireland’s goals in a 2-0 win in Dublin that paved the path for a nervy 2-1 aggregate win which sent Ireland to the 2002 World Cup in Japan/South Korea.
 

His namesake would dominate the talk of that summer – and beyond – but the other ‘R.Keane’ made a significant mark in the Far East. Ireland had drawn with Cameroon in their opening game, but Miroslav Klose’s 18th minute goal looked to be condemning Mick McCarthy’s side to defeat against Germany.
 

It was that night in Ibaraki that Keane’s time-stood-still moment arrived. A Hail-Mary ball forward by Steve was flicked on by Quinn.
 

This was two minutes into stoppage time. Ireland’s last chance. McCarthy stood wide-mouthed at the edge of his technical area, flicking his own head in tandem with Quinn’s.
 

Then came Keane. It seemed to take an age but, after missing a tackle of a German defender, Keane struck past Oliver Kahn. Bedlam. “I knew that goal was coming,” Keane said at the time.
 

“It was like a film in my head. I said to Quinny that he was going to come on and he was going to flick one onto me. When I saw he was coming on, I knew that was it.”
 

Kahn, at the time one of the world’s best goalkeepers, had earlier denied Keane, but he would not stand in the striker’s way a second time.
 

“I saw Kahn coming out this time, he comes out very fast and he looks huge. So I kept coming and I just hit it. He even got a hand to it. Sometimes you need a bit of luck, it hit the post and went in.”
 

When Steve Staunton was selected to replace Brian Kerr as the manager of the national team, it was widely believed that Shay Given would take the captaincy. The Donegalman was the popular tip, but Staunton surprised many when selecting Keane and saying that Given ‘didn’t need’ the armband.
 

“He's a world-class player,” Staunton said of Keane. “Our lads respect him - the utmost respect - and I've given him a little challenge.

“He's certainly up for the job. I'm sure he'll do a good job.

“The fans see him as an icon. You only have to listen to the chorus tomorrow night and he responds as Shay does at other end.”
 

Staunton’s belief was that the captaincy would make Keane ‘a better player’. While that is questionable, there could be no questions over Keane’s commitment to the green shirt.
 

It won’t take him long now to surpass Given as Ireland’s record caps holder. It will be another feather in his cap, another record beside which rests the name ‘Robbie Keane’.
 

He is Ireland’s leading goalscorer, Ireland’s youngest goalscorer and he holds the record for the most games as captain, surpassing the record set by Andy Townsend.
 

Keane is second only behind Raul and Jan Koller for the most goals in European Championship qualification and his 54 goals mark him out as the highest goalscorer ever from these islands.
 

There will be more – and you wouldn’t bet against him climbing a European ladder that has only 7 players ahead of him in the all-time international list. Koller and Christian Streich are on 55 and Hungarian Imre Schlosser is on 59, tallies that are well within Keane’s reach.
 

And yet, and yet there remain his doubters.
 

His goalscoring record for Ireland is just shy of a 1 in 2 ratio in competitive games: 37 goals in 78 competitive internationals. In those games, without his goals Ireland would be 35 points down on what they achieved.
 

In the last campaign alone, he netted in a 2-1 win over Macedonia in Dublin and hit a brace against the same side in Skopje on the night he found the net for the 50th time. In the play-off against Estonia in Tallinn, Keane scored twice in the 4-0 win.
 

His international career is pockmarked by crucial strikes: from the goals against Yugoslavia, Malta and Turkey that helped win seven points in his first campaign, to the goal that forced extra-time in the last 16 clash with Spain at the 2002 World Cup, to the qualifying goals for the 2010 World Cup against Cyprus (1-0 win in Dublin), Georgia (twice in a 2-1 win), Italy (a late equaliser in a one-all draw in Bari) and Cyprus (once in a 2-1 win in Nicosia).
 

That is not to forget that it was Keane who netted that night in Paris when Ireland’s hopes and dreams shuddered to a crushing halt in the Stade de France.
 

Tonight, Ireland will look to a Sammon-Long axis to break the barrier against Austria in a game that is ‘must win’. On these nights before it was to Keane that the green army looked to.
 

Tonight will offer a glimpse of what life after him will be like. Maybe, just maybe, we should be more careful with our wishes as the career-span of the only real 'prolific' striker Ireland has ever produced gets considerably shorter by each passing international.

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