ROBBIE KEANE MADE his latest piece of history with a 12-minute hat-trick as Ireland stuffed Gibraltar.
Keane’s first-half treble took him to 65 international goals and set the Boys in Green on course for a comfortable 7-0 win.
It means Ireland’s captain is now the top scorer in European Championship qualification and also moves to within three of the legendary Gerd Muller on the all-time list.
But he admitted afterwards that he pays no attention to the record books.
“I get messages from people telling me. My brother tells me all the time. He texts me and my mates text me but I genuinely couldn’t tell you who’s even close to me on [the all-time list]. That’s being honest.”
“I never think about what’s happened before,” he added. “I never think about what’s going to happen in the future because I can’t predict what’s going to happen in the future.
The past is the past. I scored those goals, but I’m so focused on what I’m doing now that I’m not really interested in anybody else to be honest.
Keane’s goals had Ireland 3-0 up after just 18 minutes and James McClean (2), Wes Hoolahan and an own goal from Gibraltar keeper Jordan Perez completed the rout.
Keane hailed Ireland’s preparation and said: “You can’t go into a game thinking, ‘How many goals am I going to score today?’ because it’s usually going to bite you in the ass.
“You have to respect everyone you’re playing against. Is there going to be goals there? Of course if you look at their last game against Poland but you can’t go into the game thinking that.
You have to go into the game and respect the opposition. If you do the things the right way, and we did — the build-up from Monday to today, we treated this like we were playing Germany, and I think you have to treat every game like that.
“If you have that attitude and respect, I think we’ll go far in this competition.”
Tuesday’s trip to Gelsenkirchen will be a completely different test but Keane feels Ireland can go now with plenty of confidence.
“Before this game, our main aim was to get six points going into the Germany game and we’ve done that so we’re going into the Germany game with a lot of confidence.
“Make no mistake, we can go there and get something out of that game. There’s no question about that.”
