SIDELINE CUT/KEITH DUGGAN: It is a little known fact that the easiest way of "falling" into sports journalism is to wait tables in restaurants.

These occupations are, of course, in many ways at opposite ends of the career spectrum, one being an ancient and universally appreciated art form, while sports writing is just a camouflage for lifelong slacking. But the waiting business does provide you with the ideal preparation for the inevitable fall from grace, the plummet into the murky and ultimately foolish business of taking athletes seriously.

Waiting tables, you get to stand around important-looking people with a notebook and pen and desperately try to coax a few words out of them. You scribble these words down and deliver them to your superior, a perennially angry and harassed individual who accepts your notes balefully and mutters stuff about "getting it right." Waiting tables, you have an unparalleled access to alcoholic delights of endless hue and potency.

Waiting tables, it is not only not frowned upon but virtually fashionable to wear a shirt and tie splashed with food stains. Waiting tables, you find that regular people often forget to say hello. Waiting tables, you are frequently forced to reconcile yourself to the truth that the teacher who predicted you'd end up a waster (or was it waiter?) was perfectly right.

Waiting tables, you will find yourself doing nasty chores late on Friday night while the rest of the world is busy living. Waiting tables, you will probably laugh harder and more often than at any other time in your life. Waiting tables, you will encounter many of life's most wonderful and weird.

So waiting tables is no different than writing sports.

Watching the Irish soccer team train in Tolka Park on Monday brought to mind one of the more glorious table-waiting episodes of that fading period when we knew what an honest buck was. Sometime in the mid-1990s this column was a floor waiter in an eating establishment in the Soho area of London. The restaurant, named D______, has since gone out of business - a curious fate that has befallen many of the eateries that gave employment to this column. But in its celebrated heyday (and it literally was a day), D______ was the place where the stars came out to eat (generally once and once only). For the waiting staff, one of the incidental perks of the job was bagging a celebrity-touched table, (a) because it probably meant a good tip and (b) because either way it beat describing the charm of the wok-cooked mussels in chillies and coconut milk to common folk.

Sadly, this column was desperately inept when it came to spotting the great and beautiful until, one rainy Friday evening, the door to the mezzanine opened and in strode the man we used to call Captain Fantastic.

"It's . . . it's Mick McCarthy," stammered your awe-struck column, seeking confirmation from Joseba, his colleague from the Basque country who delighted in being outrageously camp and appeared to have scant regard for Irish soccer lore.

"Who is this Meeeeek?" he said. "I lak heez har. Lak a young Chrees-topher Lee." Leaving the insolent Basque, this column proceeded to wait on Mick McCarthy. It was around the time he was going for the Ireland job - the announcement was due out the following week. Although he probably detected the Irish accent, we avoided the tiresome where-are-you-from ritual and also, no mention was made of his forthcoming appointment. In fact, this column pretended not to recognise him at all (a) in order not to appear as if brown-nosing for a better tip and (b) because McCarthy was out for a quiet evening with his wife and friends.

THE most likeable thing about McCarthy was that then, even as now, he called it blunt and like it was. The menu in D_____ was, like in all these places, ludicrously solemn and virtually impossible to decipher. Desserts, for instance, were not simply two-word affairs but lavish descriptions that generally buried the core ingredient under essence of this and paring of that. McCarthy, though, in choosing his pudding, took one withering look at the formidable text, pointed an index finger at one of the paragraphs and declared, in no uncertain terms: "I'll 'ave the Banana." And when you stripped away all the superfluous culinary-speak, the dessert was a simple banana. It was precisely then that this column felt certain that McCarthy was the right man for the Ireland job, that he could cut to the quick, didn't mince words and was admirably forthright in his selection policy.

Only when his bill was settled and his party was leaving did we broach the subject of the Irish job. Choosing the right moment, your column, in true Wodehouse tradition shimmered into being and offered "Meeeeek" heartfelt best wishes for the post.

For the longest moment, we stood in the midst of a firm, Barnsley-style handshake and then the Captain was gone. It was no surprise to discover, when clearing the table, that he had left the perfect tip: generous but not flash, well above the standard but true to solid Barnsley fiscal principles.

Of course, we never expected to encounter him again, other than on the television. Working in D_____ somehow felt empty after the McCarthy experience and notice was served. It is nice to think that the since vanished restaurant simply couldn't cope without the waiting skills of this column.

A lot has happened since we stood as equals in that noisy London restaurant, although mostly to McCarthy. Watching him out there in Tolka, the rain lashing down and the young millionaires dancing to his booming, to-be-obeyed dialect, the thought struck that he has made it from that forgotten eve of appointment to now, with a welcome extension to his contract, by being utterly true to himself. His way has been different to Charlton's, less lovable perhaps, less fun, yet never less than truthful. He probably feels as if the last six years have aged him internally and maybe hardened him a bit. But, as the happy anticipation of adventures ahead roll into Lansdowne Road tonight, you have to take your hat off. Against the odds, the Captain got it done.

And after the match, if this column has to stand in front of McCarthy with a pen and notebook, things will be different. There will definitely be no tip at the end of it and a handshake is probably out of the question. "Meeek" will still say it like it is, though.

One final thing: waiting tables also teaches you that fur coats feel sort of creepy and are very difficult to place on coat hangers. This is a skill that takes time to perfect and will be of absolutely no use at any stage in later life.