1. All about Robbie Keane as a legend retires
THERE WERE TIMES tonight when the Irish team’s performance and the game itself felt almost inconsequential, such was the intense focus and goodwill towards Robbie Keane at the Aviva Stadium this evening.
It wasn’t the most spectacular of send-offs — an exhibition game with Oman in front of 27,300 people is a long way off scoring vital goals in crucial games with Germany and Holland.
Yet as meaningless friendlies and conclusions to international careers go, it wasn’t bad by any means, and Keane got the goal and the win tonight that his 18-and-a-half-year Ireland stint deserved.
Speaking afterwards, the 36-year-old striker was understandably a proud man as he spoke of “former players, former managers, people around the world wishing me well”.
“I just wanted to do well one last time,” he added. “To get the goal topped it off.
“All the players were asking me to sign their jerseys (after the game).
“(Not playing is) something that’ll hit me over the next few days.”
Yet it was left to Martin O’Neill at the post-match conference to best sum up the enormity of Keane’s contribution to Irish football in almost two decades on the international scene following an emotional night at the Aviva Stadium.
“I won’t see the (goalscoring) record broken in my lifetime and even the youngest in the room here won’t.”
2. Hard to learn much against dire Oman side
It was a fitting send-off for Robbie Keane and no one got injured, but those positives aside, Martin O’Neill can’t have learned too much from tonight’s friendly.
Harry Arter showed some nice touches, Jon Walters looked quite sharp and the back four was largely solid.
However, Oman were such poor-quality opposition that you have to take each bright spot with a grain of salt.
The visitors had one decent chance early on, when Keiren Westwood was forced to tip away a header by Al Muqbali, who had been left unmarked from a corner.
Yet that one minor scare aside, the Arab country played very much as you would expect of a side ranked 107th in the world, with some highly inept first-half defending ensuring it would be a comfortable night for the Boys in Green.
3. Attention turns to Serbia
Martin O’Neill will perhaps feel somewhat relieved that tonight’s Oman game is out of the way.
The match itself was always going to be overshadowed by the Robbie Keane sideshow, while the various Irish players involved in Transfer Deadline Day was a further inconvenient distraction.
Now, however, with tonight’s game having gone smoothly in pretty much every sense, O’Neill and co can turn their attention to the main task ahead.
The difficulty of travelling to Serbia cannot be underestimated — they are a squad filled with promising youngsters such as former Man City centre-back Matija Nastasić, as well as others with Premier League experience, including Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanović and Southampton’s Dušan Tadić.
Speaking afterwards, O’Neill said he was happy with how the evening panned out. It’s hard to imagine any player radically changing the manager’s plans or thinking as regards next week on the back of that performance, nonetheless it was a useful exercise, with some key players such as Jon Walters getting much-needed game time having not played too much with their clubs so far this season.
Yet it was merely a dress rehearsal at most for the game on Monday in which the Irish team will need to be at their very best in order to secure a positive result.
The42 is on Snapchat! Tap the button below on your phone to add!
