SIDELINE CUT:The Dubliner has had a long and colourful career but he is still young enough to reap even greater reward for his exceptional focus and persistence
WHEN ROBBIE KEANE scans the Premiership table in the Liverpool Echothese days, he probably counts his blessings. With immaculate timing, he has gone from a club plummeting to the damp basement of the Premiership to one that looks poised for a return to old glories. A transfer from Spurs to Liverpool for €24.25 million to team up with one of the best strikers in the world is the stuff of childhood fantasy and as Keane has frequently remarked, standing in front of Anfield's Liver Bird symbol for post-match interviews, he had, as a kid back in Tallaght, dreamt of playing for Liverpool.
On Wednesday night, when he scored against PSV Eindhoven, it was clear from the huge ovation emanating from the old ground that the Anfield crowd are eager for the Dubliner to succeed. His 11-game opening spell without a goal was hardly a catastrophic beginning to his Merseyside days but it was in danger of becoming a slightly awkward topic around the dressing-room. So Keane watched his flick until the ball was in the net and for a split second, as the great roar began, he looked stunned; then he headed off toward the end line to perform his formerly obligatory cartwheel and tumble. There it was then: Robbie Keane off and running in Kenny Dalglish's old number-seven shirt.
At 28, Keane is ideally placed to leave a permanent mark on the annals of English football. Even in the short and lurid lifespan of the Premier League, countless overhyped professionals have passed under its bright lights, bouncing from club to club with their combinations of willing athleticism and unremarkable football skill. They shuffle into retirement with well-guarded investments and the Hello!lifestyle as compensation. But they leave also with the depressing knowledge that even though they were better at football than 99.9 per cent of the population, they were ultimately journeymen. The lucky ones might have an FA Cup or even a league medal as mementoes: many more will have to settle for action photographs of them squaring up to the incandescent figures like Denis Bergkamp or Alan Shearer or Roy Keane. But only a few get to make a lasting impression.
For most of this decade, the general report on Keane was that he was a very good and honest striker who operated a shade below the marquee names like Michael Owen or Ruud van Nistelrooy - the boys the ex-pros on Match of the Dayliked to purr over. Keane was never one to draw the most syrupy praise from the MOTD set: it was a rare evening they awarded him the ultimate Premiership accolade of being "top-drawer." But here is, at 28, playing for the most charismatic and - with the exception of the gloriously dysfunctional Newcastle United - strangest club in England.
And it is hard to figure how Robbie is still in his 20s. The man seems to have been playing football forever. It is a full 10 years since he cracked home two goals on his debut for Wolverhampton Wanderers. He was just 18 then, chubby faced and cheeky and ready to take on the world. Six million notes - then a record for a teenager - brought him to Coventry and from there, of course, he was courted by Marcello Lippi and Inter Milan.
And all of Ireland blushed with pride at that one because ever since Liam Brady went down a storm at Juve and Sampdoria, an Irish kid signing for one of the palaces of the Italian game has been a huge source of pride.
Timing and circumstance meant it never quite worked out and back to the north he went, back to tradition and Leeds United. Then, as Don Revie's old club threatened to burn itself out of existence, Keane was sold to the Spurs. And all this time, he was showing up for Ireland, the years transforming him from the irrepressible kid to the senior professional. He quickly and methodically closed in and eclipsed the modest Irish goals record of 21 and regardless of his Premiership form, he turned up ready to play for Ireland.
It might have gone differently for Keane. He might have burnt out. Goal scoring is such a temperamental business that too long on a cold bench or an ill-timed injury or a plain old dip in confidence might have led to a gradual retreat to lesser clubs. You only have to think of the career lives of two genuine Kop idols, Fowler and Owen, to be reminded longevity can prove elusive when it comes to strikers.
The front men get the most explicit glory: they most often get to stand in the blaze of adulation. But every week without a goal brings increasing pressure to score. Keane endured his unsteady seasons and persevered; he bided his time and never lost the appetite for chasing down lost causes, more a terrier at heart than a princely leading man.
But suddenly at Spurs it all clicked into place. The lessons of knocking around some of the most storied clubs in England and the craft he picked up from his sensational apprenticeship years at Wolverhampton through to his Saturdays playing on England's sacred grounds paid off. One hundred goals for Tottenham! Enough to ensure he will be fondly remembered by the Tottenham faithful.
In the rapacious way of the Premiership, such was the vivid success of Keane's partnership with Dimitar Berbatov last season that ready cash was bound to smash it. Now, the Spurs front two have gone to the most evocative names in English football and the London club looks set for a long winter. And there is no time for sentimentality or regret.
And so Keane has gone to Liverpool, the club he opted against signing for as a 15-year-old because he knew that much as he yearned to wear the red, Wolves was the smarter option for a callow Irish boy.
Even before Wednesday, Ian Rush backed Keane to go "on a scoring run" once he found his rhythm and predicted his partnership with Torres gave Liverpool a real chance of winning the league for the first time since 1990. Since being bought by an odd and bickering American couple, Liverpool has been a deeply unsettled club. But while the team plays at Anfield and retains local heroes like Gerrard and Carragher, it retains more connections to its tradition than most modern sports clubs.
When Rafa Benitez, the quietly stubborn coach whose interpretation of the game delights and confounds supporters in equal measure, spoke about Keane he praised him as "a good professional, with a good mentality, a player who has really settled down." And you can see that in the spare look on Keane's face, the hollowed cheeks of a serious and deeply ambitious footballer. He has made the transition from fearless teenager to a tough professional. It must have been a private highlight to have his name serenaded to the tune of an old Beatles classic on Wednesday.
The best may be yet to come.
