The usual scene. Windswept training grounds and reserves gallivanting on a distant pitch. At the clubhouse, nestling beneath the large sign that says Winning Is Everything, Bev the dinner lady is being ribbed about her Jamaican holiday and downstairs there is the clatter of boots on concrete.

The concrete pathway around the building is littered with boots and flip flops. There is a stainless steel sink for prising the mud off expensive footwear and a five-litre tin of Dale and Martin boot polish waiting to be slathered. In the distance, invisible behind bushes and fences, the first team are playing one touch.

You know Clinton Morrison is in the house. From 50 yards away you hear his voice calling for passes. Yo! Yo! Yo! Yo! Aw man! The game is unravelling on a small pitch which is the size of the two tennis courts which used to be here. Trevor Francis, as gaffer, is hanging out on the wing but not getting the respect his position entitles him to. The tackles are flying in, the ball is pin-balling about the place. There's the usual urgent shouts. Tommo! Doog! Flem! And that relentless Yo! Yo! Yo! The striker in the gloves and hat always wants the ball. Apart from his mouth he moves a little less than everyone conserving his energy like a lion in the sun. When he goes though it's a couple of seconds of blur. Swoosh. Skip. Shoot.

"Qualiteeeee!" If this cold winter morning in Beckenham were a party Clinton Morrison would be the life and soul of it. This is a big season for him. Now a fledged international, second top scorer in the first division, Crystal Palace's top scorer for the third year running. Seventeen league goals so far, all of them, unaccountably he says, scored at home. If Palace don't bring Morrison into the Premiership in May, somebody else will have brought him there by next August, via the chequebook and the agent route.

And of course this summer he will be in the best shop window of all. He'll be in Japan. With one goal, a debut tap in against Croatia and very little playing time to his credit, Morrison might seem like a long shot to feature on the field of play but right now, with Robbie Keane at best the third in line striker at Leeds, and with Clinton Morrison outscoring everyone else on the horizon who knows? His 15 minutes at the end of Ireland's game in Tehran were an appetiser for what he can offer.

Speed. Energy. Finishing.

Of course the mere fact that he is offering anything at all in an Irish jersey bothers some people. This time one year ago Clinton Morrison was very much in the news. From August to January he had been scoring promiscuously in the first division.

England were said to want him. Jamaica wanted him. Ireland were interested. Fatally it seemed that Morrison was biding his time waiting for a man called Sven to call him. Mick McCarthy announced tersely that Morrison should get back to him if, and only if, he had decided he really wanted to play for Ireland.

At the same time his notoriety was added to by the Michael Owen business. Owen came to Selhurst Park for a League Cup first leg and missed a few sitters. Morrison joked, sympathetically that even he might have scored one of them, a jest which when transposed in tabloidese in The Sun the following day suggested that Morrison had "slammed" Owen. The target was Owen. Morrison had merely provided some ammunition. By the time the tie got back to Anfield, Morrison was as popular on Merseyside as The Sun itself. He played terribly, snatching a fresh air shot from a good six-yard-box chance and generally giving the Anfield crowd something to laugh spitefully about. His form left him. He scored once in the last 19 games of the season. The newspapers consigned him to the 15 minutes of fame (now expired) department.

Clinton Morrison has a different story. In fact he has a different name. He was raised as Clinton Chambers, son of a Jamaican Dad, but when he was 15 he changed his surname to Morrison in deference to his Mum, Angela and his Nan, Mary Morrison of Dundalk, via Garristown in north Dublin. He doesn't lay it on too thick but the Irish thing was always there.

"My Nan she moved to England when she was about 40 and she lived here ever since. I knew from when I was small I could play for Ireland. When I came to Palace when I was 16 I talked to Ian Evans about playing for the Irish under-21s some day but I don't think he believed I had any real Irish in me. Nobody believed I had Irish in me. I was only in Ireland once. I went down to the boats, done fishing somewhere near Garristown. I was about eight or nine. Just the once, we went."

He grew up in Tooting. Not poor, he says and not well off. Sometimes, not often, they went to his Nan's house and listened to Irish music. Not with any great reverence but he and his sister, Ciara, were always aware. Clinton knew too that the box next to the word footballer was the only one he would be ticking when it came to careers class. His mother recognised early that her son's best chance probably lay down that road, doing what he was best at.

"She did everything for me, my Mum. Everything. She kept me in school when I didn't want no lessons, she brought me to games, she kept my chin up. I don't think I would have turned bad, doing crimes and that. It's not me, not the way I am, but in the same way I don't know what would have happened. There was a lot of crime going on. I was with Spurs and they let me go when I was 16 and that was the end of the world for me because I supported them when I was small but she kept me at it, made me go to trials. I went to Palace and scored a hat-trick and Peter Nicholas signed me the next day."

And since then it's been the yellow brick road. Any time he's played against Spurs at any level since he's scored. He made his Palace debut late in the season against Sheffield Wednesday in 1998 and reckons that every year he's added something to his game. Now he is an Irishman. Says he feels it. Comes to Ireland every break he gets. Visits family. Chills. His Mother comes to every game. His Nan came to the Cyprus match. Sweet times.

"It was 100 per cent the right decision. I wanted to do it when I was younger. Most of my family were telling me to play for Ireland, my Nan and my Mum specially. They thought it was best."

He was aware of the England thing and a bit uncomfortable now that too big a thing might have been made about it.

"When I was young in Tooting, it was everyone's dream to play for England. It's a boy's dream to be playing for England, everyone's dream, man. I had the Irish thing. I knew about it from when I was small. I asked about it. Then last year everyone is saying, you'll play for England. My manager Alan Smith was saying it to me. Lots of other people. To be fair it was real pressure. A young boy like me, I didn't handle it too well." And if England had come along last spring? "Looking now, I don't think so. Never. Mick McCarthy had told me to go away and make up my mind. He wasn't pissed off I don't think. He wasn't speaking to me, he was speaking to agents and that. He had no contact, he had to contact my agent.

"Then when I was playing badly and everyone had forgotten me, Mick came and had a word. He said to keep playing, to keep going, that I could score a lot of goals for my country. He came when I was down and that was just quality. I knew then there was only one decision I could have made."

So he arrived, uncharacteristically quiet and wary at first, aware of the doubts about him: "I was worried. You don't know if you'll be accepted. The players or the fans. The first training sessions I just went and kept my mouth shut but everyone was good to me. I just felt at home after a while. Didn't know anybody. It was difficult."

Now he counts Steven Reid, Jason McAteer, Mark Kennedy, Lee Carsley as friends, as well as Mick Byrne and Tony Hickey, who provide so much of the flavour to Irish squadtrips. "I get on well with them all. I love them all, specially Mick Byrne and Tony the security man."

Right now, life is beautiful. Palace are top six, after a brief dip at the end of the Steve Bruce era they have won four on the trot and added the experience of Curtis Fleming and Danny Granville to their defence.

And Clinton Morrison is flying, living the life he loves, loving the life he lives. He's still the kid who went out buzzing and spent his whole first pay packet as a footballer on clothes.

"The new gaffer, aw man he makes me work so hard. That's the main thing, man. Working hard. But I am a better player now. It's good man. I bought a new house two years ago but now I'm moving again in two weeks, further out. And I got me Mum a house too 'cos she's done brilliant for me."

Every Saturday now when his own game is finished he hunts down the scores and scorers from certain other games. How's Dave Connolly done. Richie Sadlier. Big Quinny. Robbie.

"Yeah I have a little competition in me head. I want to be top Irish scorer. I want to be top scorer in the first division. I think I'm six ahead in one competition and four behind in the other. Sixteen games left though."

For now the abiding image of him will be duetting with Mick Byrne on the theme tune from the Bear in the Big Blue House in Tehran airport last November. Tehran, that strange odyssey might transpire to be the making of Clinton Morrison.

"It was very unusual. A bit hostile but the 15 minutes I got. Man, that was a great experience. I was pleased. Glad we were there, glad that I got on and played a bit in the qualifying. To get called on when they've got an experienced hero like Niall Quinn on the bench, it was quality really."

There's a long way still to go, a long walk on quality street for Clinton Morrison but already he's got his own favourite Irish World Cup memory.

"Ray Houghton when he was here at Palace, he'd talk about the left foot against Italy. He never stopped talking about it. Always on about it. I enjoyed that, but then coming in here after Tehran, man, I was on a buzz. Everyone in here got it."

And he waves around the Palace canteen "See, there's lots of English and Welsh and Scottish here and man I don't think they was really rooting for us but that's life. Most of them, they're not going. We are."

He's fidgety to be off. Pulls his hoody over his head and turns to the outdoors. The Palace canteen staff watch him leave, the club's big star. They know they could be listening to still more blow-by-blow descriptions of great Irish goals in the years to come.