Captain Keane looks back to the future

The future starts tomorrow captain Robbie Keane declared this afternoon ahead of the Republic of Ireland's first competitive game under Giovanni Trapattoni tomorrow.

After the team's final training session before the first of two World Cup qualifying games in four days, the Italian veteran said he was seeking maximum points from the away fixtures.

Four points could be regarded as a steady start for a team which failed to qualify for the last three tournament finals but despite Georgia tomorrow and another tricky tie against Montenegro on Wednesday, the 69-year-old said he would only be fully satisfied with two wins.

"A coach sometimes in a press conference will say maybe four points is good, but sometimes a coach is lying a little bit.

"Normally we will say four points is good, but in my heart, I feel six points."

His captain was in equally positive mood saying the controversy and humiliations of the past are behind the team and can only serve to motivate all the players irrespective of whether they have experienced a major finals.

The 28-year-old said his experience at the 2002 World Cup - when he burst onto the international stage - will remain with him forever and he is hungry to taste it once again.

Keane said: "It's a long time ago, it's only a memory now. That's gone, that's the past.

"This is the future now and that starts tomorrow with, hopefully, a good performance and a good result.

"No-one wants to fail. We want to be the best we can. Every player wants to play in big competitions, and there is no bigger than the World Cup.

"I am very lucky, I have played in one before and there are a few players who have played there.

"But there are a lot of players who haven't played there and I am sure they will be as desperate as the players who have played there before.

Trapattoni also dismissed any suggestion that Irish prospects could be boosted by the Georgians having to play their first home game in Group Eight at the Bruchweg Stadium in Mainz, Germany, because of the unrest in their home country.

And he had sympathetic words for his counterpart Hector Cuper who has implied the Irish are taking advantage of Georgia's domestic difficulties.

Trapattoni, who knows Cuper from their days managing in the Serie A, said player safety must come first, and that his team would not be advantaged by Fifa's decision to move the game.

"I understand why our Georgian colleagues and their supporters think about that.

"But we said FIFA must take the responsibility. The whole world could see on television what happened in Georgia was a serious situation.

"But I don't think we have an advantage, no, never. Our players must not think we by playing in Germany, we have an advantage.

"It's 90 minutes on the pitch, 90 minutes of 11 v 11."