It's lunchtime. Thursday. Getting towards match day at the Irish team's Airport Hotel base and, frankly, it's chaos. Mick McCarthy's daily press conference has just finished and the 30 or so journalists who have attended it, the numbers bolstered that morning by the arrival of the English corps, are spilling, slightly disgruntled, into an already crowded foyer.

It has been a quiet week and today's copy might have been about the team, for McCarthy had told reporters that he had decided on his team and would happily have given it out. However, he wanted to tell the players first and he wasn't going to do that until after the day's training session. It has been that sort of day again, and there's still a player to corner for the next day's papers.

"Where'd Denis just go?" asks one English reporter anxiously after I had just parted company with the Manchester United fullback. I look around but it's too late.

Irwin has slipped through the crowd and made it, virtually unnoticed, to the corridor where the hotel's guest rooms begin. The English reporter looks bothered by the near miss but Keith O'Neill and Mark Kinsella are rumoured to be still knocking around so he wanders off hoping to salvage something.

For Irwin, the disappearing trick is typical. Friendly towards all of the press gang but friends with none of them, the 32-year-old from Togher has acquired the knack of making himself almost invisible when the tape recorders come out.

As Roy Keane or the latest teenage sensation is trampled in the rush, Irwin can often be seen sitting by himself. He will acknowledge the greetings from passing reporters and talk to just about anybody who asks for his time, but all the while he makes it clear, without saying a word, that this isn't his sort of thing. Football is Irwin's thing, as he has been showing at the highest level for more than a decade now. He wasn't an instant success and early on there were a few setbacks. But at United he has survived the more glamorous comings and goings around him.

Most recently the kids took over Manchester United's first team and claimed some big-name scalps. While his contemporaries were discarded one by one, however, Irwin just played his game as effectively as ever and a couple of seasons after Phil Neville was first tipped for greatness he continues to keep the bench warm at Old Trafford while the Irishman protects the left flank for Alex Ferguson.

The United manager is in no doubt about his value, remarking at one stage that "Denis is the one player I just wouldn't sell" and adding that he was comfortably the most consistent player he has had at Old Trafford. At this stage he's also the longest serving senior too.

Quite an achievement for a player whom Leeds manager Billy Bremner let go on a free transfer after 72 first-team appearances spread over three seasons. Chesterfield were the lucky club to get him but Joe Royle spotted the error and, before he had played another game, snapped him up for Oldham.

Four good seasons later Irwin was one of the reasons United had so much trouble winning their 1990 FA Cup semi-final and that summer, after he had made his Irish debut but been passed over for Italia '90, he moved to Old Trafford.

The move wasn't a complete success initially but steadily Irwin came of age at United where he has since won four league and four assorted cup medals. Most others in his position, if they had eight weeks to go to their 33rd birthday, might decide they'd done enough and might start turning their thoughts towards retirement.

Irwin, though, dismisses the idea and then suggests in a way that may or may not be a joke "nah, I don't think you start thinking about that sort of thing until you get a bit older, 34 or 35 maybe."

Not entirely true, perhaps, for he will, he says, try to get a coaching badge this year "just to have the option" even though he makes it clear that he doesn't believe that coaching, and particularly management, would be his thing.

Still, while voicing the opinion that the much increased rewards will mean earlier retirements in the future he will, he insists, stay on playing for as long as he can because he still has ambitions as a player. Everything from holding down his place at United to reaching the next European Championship with Ireland.

The latter, he feels, is as achievable as the former if the team simply put their heads down and get on with business. "There isn't the same level of expectation now as there used to be because we've had a few disappointments over the last couple of years. Last time we actually started well but Romania just kept winning the games and we ended up having to fight for second place.

"Now people don't really seem to rate our chances against Croatia and Yugoslavia but I think that's going to be a good thing. Sometimes when the expectations of a crowd are great it creates pressure for the players. We get it a lot at Old Trafford where, if we don't score inside the first 20 minutes, everybody is getting edgy and on top of us.

"This time we'll be back to being the underdogs a bit, but I honestly don't see why we can't get a good result in this game and then go on and win this group."

Irwin, though, doesn't take his role in Ireland's team for granted any more. If he did then some of Mick McCarthy's team selections during the qualifying games for France '98 must have brought him down to earth. When Lithuania arrived in town last August, he found himself dropped from the team, and the Irish manager decided to keep him on the bench for the visit to Iceland two weeks' later.

"Well, there's not much to say about it. It's the same for anyone either at your club or with your country. Nobody likes to be dropped but Jeff Kenna was playing very well at the time and I just had to get on with it and try to catch the manager's eye again.

"Overall, I've been very lucky during my career. I've wanted to play and most of the time I have so I can't really complain that I lost out for a while there. You never know what is going to happen so I've come here for this game hoping for the best. But I'm happy that at United I'm playing and hopefully I've been good enough to impress Mick."

McCarthy, in fact, like Leeds before him, altered his opinion. Howard Wilkinson tried to bring Irwin back to Elland Road a few seasons back (after Ferguson declined the offer over the phone he went on to ask if there was any chance of Wilkinson letting him have Eric Cantona. The rest, as they say . . .) and Irwin was back in the side that beat Lithuania away.

Injury, one caused by a reckless challenge by Feyenoord's Paul Bosvelt, robbed him of a place in the second play-off game against Belgium but since returning to action in January he has once again looked to be among the Irish manager's best options.

He believes that the balance currently in the panel between experienced players and emerging talent means that Ireland, for the first time in many years, have a team that is generally underestimated. Irwin, though, won't be the first person you hear shouting about it.