Interview/Kevin Doyle: Mary Hannigan talks to the Ireland striker whose inclusion tonight would be greatly welcomed.

He always, he insists, had faith in his ability, but perhaps not as much faith as his father, his brother-in-law and friend. It was, he says, about two years ago, he was playing on the right wing for Cork City, when the trio reckoned the boy was a contender.

They took themselves to the bookies, asked for odds on the young fella one day playing for the senior Irish team in a competitive international, handed over 100, and sat back and watched him blossom.

He sat out yesterday's five-a-side in training after feeling a "tightness" in his leg, but his manager is confident he'll be okay for tonight. But even if the worst comes to the worst and he misses out on selection the odds are that soon enough Kevin Doyle will make his senior competitive debut for Ireland.

But if it happens tonight? Well, the father, the brother-in-law and the friend will be 10,000 to €15,000 the richer. "I'm not certain if the odds were 100 to 1 or 150 to 1, but I would have thought they'd have been a bit higher, maybe a couple of hundred to one," he said.

"I don't know what made them do it. I think I'd just scored for the Ireland under-21s so they just decided to put the bet on it. I wasn't aware of it at the time. It was probably when I was moving to Reading that they told me. They told me I had to get the finger out and start doing something. No doubt, they will be looking forward to tonight."

"My Dad's been saying he's been annoyed by journalists about it but I think he likes all the talking and filling them in with different things. He's just hoping I get a minute on the pitch, if I do they'd all be fairly happy."

Was he not tempted himself to put on a bob or two? "Probably now I would be, but when I was playing right wing for Cork, no. But you always have to believe you can do it."

The then Cork City manager Pat Dolan believed Doyle could score goals, switching him from the wing to up front, his belief rewarded with a flow of goals that season.

That flow continued seamlessly when he moved to Reading for €117,000 last year, the 22-year-old from Wexford scoring 18 goals in Reading's promotion-winning season, and he's already got off the Premiership mark, scoring against Aston Villa in the second game of the campaign.

"It was mostly relief. A bit like my first Championship goal. You want to get the first one out of the way as soon as possible, get off the mark, get it out of the way and know you can score in the Premiership. I didn't feel like sprinting to the other end of the pitch to celebrate, so I went down in front of the Villa fans, got a bit of abuse and got out of there pretty quickly."

"It's been fast and furious. The first game was end to end. Nothing has frightened us so far and we know we can play better. Everyone is just that bit stronger, that bit fitter. But the first two games especially, I would have got in to the games just as much as I would have got in to any game in the Championship. It was fine. I was asking a few of the lads did they feel out of their depth and they were saying no, it was nice to get on the ball, got as much space as we would have last year, if not more."

With Stephen Elliott and Clinton Morrison, his chief rivals for the job of partnering Robbie Keane up front, playing their football in the Championship Doyle acknowledges that being a Premiership striker should give him the edge, but only if he "produces the goods" for Reading.

"I've got as good a chance as most of the lads, but it all depends on how I do at Reading. Scoring goals in the Championship helped me get my chance in the first place with Ireland, but being in the Premiership is where Steve Staunton wants his players to be, and it's where I want to be.

"If I can stay in the team, score a few goals, I've a good chance of playing for Ireland. But if I don't play well and we're bottom of the league, well, then my Ireland place, or even a place in the squad, is under pressure. So I'll just look to do well with Reading and getting capped will follow."

"It takes a while to get used to international football, to play in a different team because with your club you don't think about it. Every week you are playing, and you know how other people play, but with internationals, it's been a different team for each of my three caps. There's never a settled side, so it's hard to get into the groove and you have to take your chance when you get it. People say you need five to 10 caps before you really feel part of it. Hopefully I'll get those in the next year or two."

No more than the rest of his team-mates all week Doyle played down the significance of that defeat by the Dutch, but admits that it was soon forgotten when he returned to club duty. "Not a great experience," he said of the game, "it sort of wakes you up and lets you know it's not all going to be rosy. It gives you a kick in the arse I suppose.

"But the fact that everyone flew home that night, or the next morning, and had a club game a couple of days later meant you didn't have time to think too long about it. I know I didn't because I was in the next morning at 9.30 doing set-pieces at Reading, and then two days later we played our first game in the Premiership. So, getting back to club life helped me get over it and put the game out of my mind pretty quickly."

"Now we've met up, we're not thinking about it, or looking back on it either. We just want to look forward to the Germany game and be positive for that. We have this chance to get some confidence back in the squad and get some faith back in the team." So, to tonight's game. If Doyle's name is announced in Ireland's starting line-up, or even if he comes on as a substitute, three exceptionally loud cries will ring around the Gottlieb-Daimler Stadium. You can bet on it.