Interview - Kevin Doyle: Keith Duggan travelled to Reading to talk to their 22-year-old striker who has settled well at the club.

The Madjeski stadium is located on the edge of Reading town, all sleek architecture and alluring lights among the shopping paradises and roundabouts of suburban England. The local team, runaway leaders in the English League Championship, are hosting Norwich and although the temperature gauge near Sainbury's flirts with freezing, crowds are brisk.

It is remarkable how many fans are wearing blue and white replica shirts bearing the name Doyle on the back. The number 19 has become a popular seller in the club merchandise store since Kevin Doyle moved here from Cork City. His season has mirrored that of his new club, being smooth and impressive and slightly dreamy.

Barring a catastrophe, Reading will win the Championship and make it to the Premiership. Sixteen points clear with as many games remaining, what ought to be the toughest part of the season is on the verge of turning into a procession. Tonight is no different. Playing emboldened, even showy football, they crush a demoralised Norwich team 4-0. It could and maybe should have been more.

After one of those chaotic goalmouth skirmishes, Doyle reacted fastest and to his astonishment, found himself one-on-one with the goalkeeper, Robert Green. He was certain he heard the whistle and almost stopped before toe-poking a shot which Green parried.

"Yeah, I half turned around," he grins, embarrassed at the memory. "Still should have stuck it away, though. And the header too up the other end. Ah, well. We won though, so we won't worry too much."

It is around eleven o'clock at night and because the nearby hotel is bound to be crowded with lingering fans, Doyle suggests going back out into the stadium to talk. The pitch is still floodlit but the stadium seems smaller now that the crowd has gone and the cleaners hurry through their work in the cold night air. Doyle takes a seat in the main stand, wearing a neat suit and dismisses worries that he might catch a cold from hanging around outside.

"Well used to this," he says.

But, of course, that's the thing: he is not. It is all blazingly new and eye-opening, this professional football life in England. On the way out to the stadium, the taxi-driver Phil, a Scouser who managed the Barge pub in Dublin for years back before the boom, told of giving Doyle a lift from the airport shortly after he arrived.

"I says to him, 'you're one of the Irish boys we've signed'. And he says, 'yeah, I'm the cheap one'. Quick as a flash! That's what he said. And he was right. Reading got him for £70,000. That was a steal."

Doyle shrugs at the suggestion. "I dunno . . . " he protests quietly. It is not as if he has undergone a metamorphosis. He reasons that he can't have improved all that much since he left Cork and says that plenty of people have let him know as much.

"But I do have much more confidence now and it is a massive feeling going out there with that. Because it is a jump. The pressure, I mean. Guys coming on trial are getting signed here constantly and there are plenty of young lads coming through. You always have to be on your toes, people watching what you do, what you say. There are interviews a lot.

"And then just the thing of playing in front of a full house. This place gets noisy. Just getting used to that. It's funny the way the thing just took off. If we hadn't gone well at the start of the season, then maybe I mightn't have done as well. But we played decent stuff tonight, especially in the first half and that makes it easier."

Doyle was eye-catching in that first half. The towering Irish international Gary Doherty marked him. And even from the astral heights of the press box, it was clear to see the arcs of two sons of Irish football meeting briefly, with the Reading striker in the ascendant. Doherty bundled Doyle over after just eight minutes and was fortunate to receive only a yellow card, as he was last man back. Nicky Shorey buried the free kick. "Ahh, I like Gary, we get on well," Doyle says casually. " We'd a bit of a laugh out there for ourselves."

In the second half, Doyle took possession on the right flank, his back to goal and two Canary-shirted defenders shadowing him. One sweet turn left the defenders back-pedalling and Doyle sent the perfect ball through what Mark Lawrenson has come to refer to "the corridor of uncertainty." The Norwich defence, already jittery, were frozen and Leroy Lita bustled through to score at close range.

There the competition seeped out of the game and Doyle was taken off by Stevie Coppell with 15 minutes remaining, the result long a formality. Although a Manchester United fan in his childhood, Doyle has, of course, no memory of Stevie Coppell in the grainy days when his boss was an Old Trafford darling. The Reds of Cantona and Kanchelskis were his heroes.

The Doyle family was traditionally GAA, though. His father Patrick hurled under-21 with Wexford. His mother Bernie (nee Kehoe) belongs to a Wexford camogie dynasty, being one of eight sisters to play for the county. Kevin played both soccer and Gaelic, tempted by the prospect of giving England a shot but afraid of the reality.

"It was sort of a dream. I never felt it could happen. You don't see, especially in Wexford, anyone you know who has gone to England. So it was hard to gauge the level. I was just playing away. My flight was booked to go to Sunderland and the day before, I did my ankle. I was meant to go there for two weeks. Then I was meant to go to Swindon and turned that down. Bristol was meant to happen as well. I just - I wanted to go but knew I wouldn't like it. And I am glad now because looking at the kids now, how tough they have it, I don't think I would have made it."

Even Dublin seemed huge and alien to him when he joined St Patrick's Athletic. And when Pat Dolan invited him to follow him to Cork City, he took a fortnight to consider. It felt like emigration but it was a club and time he will cherish. It built him up for Reading. And now he works with Coppell, a man who is as sparing with words as Dolan and Damien Richardson are generous,

"Yeah, it has been good. He is picking me! Like, he is a different manager to what I am used to. Pat Dolan is a constant talker and would sit you down every day. Damien Richardson was the same. Coppell is more of a thinker, I feel. Says few words but gets his point across. He never complicates things with me or tells me how to play other than to go out and enjoy it and take guys on. He loves the fact that he wants me to get the ball at my feet and turn and face guys and try and run at them, to hurt teams instead of, as he calls it, playing pretty football - laying it off, passing through. And he has hammered that point home in all of us."

And Doyle plays fearlessly. The light feet and unruly blond hair and casual athleticism are redolent of Damien Duff and so too is the darting speed and fast-slow fashion with which he runs at defenders. In Reading, they have come to expect that daring and midway through the second half, he took off on one of those thrilling make-it-up-as-you-go-along sprints along the left touchline and still got the cross in, a sequence of play that infused the crowd as much as the four goals. Doyle plays fearlessly because he has been told to and because it works. And now the Premiership beckons.

"I try not to think about it because, you know, tempting fate. But emmh, I do think about it. Seems like everybody has been talking about it since November. Look, to go up would be massive. But it's a double-edged thing. Obviously we would be signing players which is great for the team but it means more pressure to keep your place. It will be another step up but probably not as much as moving from Cork to here was."

And at least it will be new to all of Reading. The great thing for Doyle is that after nights like this in the Madjeski, he can walk anonymously through the town centre. Reading is a university town and a prosperous hinterland for London professionals.

Reading FC, the organisation, seems to take care of every problem. The first team are treated like princes, something that is illustrated when the players file out of the dressingroom an hour after the final whistle. The Norwich lads plodded off to the bus in sweat gear. The Reading boys were turned out in sharp suits and left carrying only a toiletries case under their arms.

All other details were taken care of. Near the players' bar, though, three young apprentices were worrying about getting home, trying to convince a friend that he should drop them off. They had training at 10 followed by club duties. They were kids, no more than 16 and dead polite. Still, the chances of all three of them making it are slim.

Sometimes when Doyle sees the rites of passage the apprentices go through, he feels guilty that he managed to avoid it. He admires these teenagers for their stoicism and ambition and the camaraderie that gets them through. The one consolation for them is that Reading is a family-oriented club. Several employees offer the youngsters a lift back to their digs before they leave.

"Funny, I see more friends and family now than I ever did in Cork," muses Doyle. "Sure Heathrow is only up the road. My mum and dad were there tonight and my coach from Wexford, Mick Wallace. And I think I am booked up to March. Sure I have cousins up in London too. People tell me I was lucky coming here. And I feel that, you know. Everything has sort of gone my way."

At 22, Kevin Doyle is in a lovely position. He is certain to feature in Steve Staunton's thoughts in the coming months. Reading are on the rise. Doyle will bring some fresh Irish blood to the bubble world of the Premiership, as well as some good manners. There is the delicious feeling that he may be on the cusp of something wonderful and incomprehensible. He is clever enough to know that a million things could go wrong but bold enough to keep playing on instinct.

He sits there, five rows from the sideline in the shining, empty Madjeski stadium, smiling a believer's smile and starting to shiver on this freezing last night of January. Wintering happily.