International tour/Birmingham City's Colin Doyle:In a squad packed with new and often unfamiliar faces you only need to wait for Colin Doyle to stand up before making a positive identification. Standing 6ft 5ins, the young Corkman towers over all around him as he enters the room for his first media engagement as a senior international.

Fresh from establishing himself as a regular with Birmingham City over the past couple of months, he arrives to reveal he has revised his targets upward.

"My aim now is to stay in the Birmingham team and to stay in the Irish team," he says before remembering about that Shay Given guy.

"Eh, the Irish squad," he quickly adds - a concession that he, Nicky Colgan, Wayne Henderson, Paddy Kenny and a couple of others are likely to be battling each other for the number-two spot as long as the Donegalman remains on the international scene.

Doyle, though, has good reason to be pleased with his progress over the past year. Loan spells at Chester City, Nottingham Forest and Millwall had given him first-team experience when there was little prospect of it at St Andrew's.

And he might, he admits, have joined the London outfit had they not been relegated at the end of last season.

But Steve Bruce released another goalkeeper instead and told Doyle he wanted him to compete for Birmingham City's number-one spot with the Northern Ireland international Maik Taylor. By the tail-end of this season, Doyle had gained the upper hand.

"If Millwall had stayed up," he observes, "it would have been tempting to go and play Championship football but I think I made the right decision in the end.

"I'm played for Birmingham and in the international squad . . . which can't be all bad."

It didn't all start so well, though. Having played just one game for Chester, Doyle saw his debut for Forest marred by an error that cost his side the chance of pulling off a major cup upset at White Hart Lane. The teenager didn't start another first-team game for two months but insists now he coped with and learned from the setback.

"I thought I bounced back from it quite well, to be honest," he says. "It's not nice to make a mistake like that on what was sort of my debut but the lads came to me in the dressing-room afterwards and told me to forget about it and, to be fair, I thought I did. I had some good games after it.

"It was hard to be at clubs that were struggling, though. Both Forest and Millwall were relegated the years I was with them.

"This year has been different. It's been nice to be playing with a team in the top half of the table."

Doyle's progress has in no small part been down to the way he has applied himself to improving his game. His height, he admits, is both a help and a hindrance and he has had to work hard to improve his movement and footwork.

The 21-year-old also attributes his rapid progress in recent years to the fact he had some catching up to do after being obliged to play outfield through his early teens with the Cork schoolboy outfit Douglas Hall.

"I always wanted to be a goalkeeper from the time I was eight, nine or 10," he says. "It was mainly down to the fact that I supported Manchester United and idolised Peter Schmeichel; I had his gloves, his jersey, everything. I just wanted to be like him.

"But Douglas Hall reckoned I was too big and said I should play at centre half instead.

"Then at 14 the goalkeeper we had quit. I went in and got spotted by a scout, who sent me over for a trial (at City's arch rivals Aston Villa)."

He was, he admits, terribly raw, his experience as a Gaelic footballer with Douglas counting for nearly as much as his actual goalkeeping know-how.

After Villa declined, however, Birmingham stepped in to sign him and he passed up a place in the Cork minor panel in order to move to England.

Six years on, he has just signed a new four-year deal with the promotion winners and expresses a mixture of amusement and pride at reports linking him with a move to Arsenal.

"I was delighted to sign again for Birmingham because they game me my chance. And anyway, if I went to somewhere like Arsenal I probably wouldn't be playing. It's all a bit of a dream come true to be playing with Birmingham and to be linked with such big clubs."

Next up on the dream front is to retain his place at City when the club returns to the English Premiership and, of course, nail down a place in the Irish team . . . sorry, Shay, we mean of course the Ireland squad.

Steve Staunton was engaged in a late scramble last night to add a couple more players to his squad before this afternoon's departure for the United States, where the Irish are due to play friendly internationals against Ecuador and Bolivia over the next week.

The teenage midfielder Stephen Gleeson joined Wolves team-mates Darren Potter and Andy Keogh in linking up with the panel yesterday but West Brom defender Paul McShane has, as expected, withdrawn after his side's victory in the Championship promotion play-offs. And Sean St Ledger was doubtful for the trip yesterday after picking up an injury in the afternoon's training session at Malahide.

The manager declined to name the other players he is hoping to call in and seemed unsure as to who might still be available at this late stage.

Having tried to call in another striker, Stephen Ward, only to discover he was injured, the Louthman urgently needs to add at least one defender to his travelling party.

"We've got a few strikers out there but hopefully Josh (John O'Shea) comes through the cup final without any problems," he said.

"Obviously, it's not ideal. I would have liked to bring a slightly stronger squad but it's clearly not to be with all the injuries we've got. Still, I'm delighted for the ones who are here."

Staunton confirmed Anthony Stokes would travel this afternoon rather than stay behind in order to play in the last of the under-19 qualifiers, against Hungary in United Park tomorrow evening.

Gleeson, meanwhile, is now the squad's youngest player, having been born on August 3rd, 1988, nine days after Stokes.

Tour Itinerary

Republic of Ireland v Ecuador:

Wednesday May 23rd, Giants Stadium, New York.

Republic of Ireland v Bolivia:

Saturday, May 26th, Gillette Stadium, Boston.