By Cathal Dervan

ROBBIE Keane had to accept his part in Germany’s lucky winner against Ireland on Saturday night, but he also backed Ireland’s ability to bounce back against Cyprus next month and throughout their Euro qualifying bid.

A Lukas Podolski free kick, bound for the stands at the Gottlieb-Daimler Stadium, deflected wickedly off Keane’s shin on its way past a helpless Shay Given for the game’s only goal.

“I didn’t realize it was going wide. It was just one of those things and it was unfortunate. You can’t do anything about,” said Irish captain Keane afterwards.

“We’re obviously disappointed we lost the game, particularly in the manner in which we did. I don’t think it was a free-kick for them in the first place to be honest, but then the ref seemed to give a few things their way, but not for ourselves.

“I don’t think I was offside for the goal I scored. Every decision seemed to go against us, but we can’t make excuses. We can’t blame the referee.

“We have to get over it, move forward and look forward to the next game by taking a lot of positives from this one.

“We played well. We showed passion, commitment, desire and we put in a lot of hard work. If we can do that in the future then we’ve a great chance. There’s certainly a sense of optimism amongst the lads.”

Ireland go to Cyprus next month, then host the Czech Republic for their penultimate match at Lansdowne Road four days later with victory in both games now the target.

Keane added, “It’s by no means going to be easy, but we can still do it if we show the desire we did against Germany. After Holland we were heavily criticized, so we knew we had to bounce back, and other than the result I think we did that to an extent.”