English Premiership:  Emmet Malone finds Stephen Hunt, Kevin Doyle and Shane Long impatiently waiting for the start of the season - and eager to make an impact in the top flight

A week, they reckon, is a long time in politics, but a year in football? Sometimes it's hard to take on board just how much things can change. Just consider the cases of three young Irish players at Reading. Twelve months ago, Stephen Hunt recalls, Kevin Doyle and Shane Long and himself were the only new signings to arrive at the Madejski Stadium for the first day of pre-season training.

"You could see the others lads looking at us and thinking, 'Christ, is that it?' These days it's all somewhat different. On the afternoon we meet at the club's home ground all the players have gathered at the ground for the annual squad photo and media open day."

Last year's unknowns are among the last to leave, with Kevin Doyle, who wanders from one interview to the next, in particular demand.

Between bouts in front of a microphone the three players sit together at the front of the stand, beside the dugouts, poking fun at each other and laughing. Then the recorder goes on and the jokes continue. English-born Ireland under-21 international Graham Stack, the club's second-choice goalkeeper, who has already disappeared, comes in for a fair bit of light-hearted stick, but mainly they just raise their voices as they pour mock scorn on each other.

High on the agenda are the players' respective county affiliations back in Ireland. Hunt is from Waterford, Long from Tipperary and Doyle from Wexford and while the former two played intercounty hurling at underage level, Doyle - having repeatedly turned down invitations to join up with various football squads over the course of his teens - had a very close encounter with the under-21 football team before finally deciding on his future career.

"To be honest," he says, "I was very close to going with the football under-21s and giving up the soccer. First of all I enjoyed it (he played for his local club, Adamstown) and several of my friends were playing it. And it would have been easier than moving up to Dublin to sign for Pat's (St Patrick's Athletic).

"What made it harder still was the fact that, if I went to Dublin, which was on the cards at the time, I knew it would be a while before I'd be playing in the first team and so people back home, who wouldn't either know very much about the Eircom League or hold it in very high regard, would be wondering what it was I was doing up there.

"So I actually went to an under-21 training session, but then didn't get out of the car. I just left again. I don't know what made me, but I just sat in the car.

"It was raining," he laughs, "which probably helped me make the decision. It was a Sunday morning and I may have been out the night before, I don't know, but I just looked at it and I thought I don't want this. . . I don't want it at all and I think the next week I went up, signed for St Pat's and moved up to live in Dublin."

In Inchicore, he recalls, the underage ranks were dominated by young Dubliners and Doyle found it was the same when he first joined up with an international squad.

"You'd be the one lad not from Dublin and so you're outside the clique," he observes without any hint of rancour. "It's one of the things has been so good about coming to Reading. It's nice for once to come somewhere where the three lads from Ireland are all from the countryside and quite close. . . Wexford, Tipp and Waterford. . . where we've all grown up in the same way, playing GAA with our clubs and sharing the same sorts of other interests.

"A few weeks ago we were all watching Wexford playing Clare and then Waterford played Tipp and again we'd all get together in one of the apartments to watch the games. It makes life a lot easier, it's like being at home."

It was Pat Dolan who signed Doyle for St Pat's and subsequently brought him to Cork City not long after he had made the move south. "It was another difficult decision because I was just starting to enjoy it at St Pat's and I really didn't want to move again, but he's a hard man to turn down.

"In the end, it turned out to be the best decision I ever made, I think, because I was a proper full-time footballer there. It's a great city in Ireland to play in because it gets taken more seriously there. You get bigger crowds, more press - the local papers and local radio stations cover all the games well - and it's more like being a proper footballer and it certainly helped to prepare me for coming over here."

AFTER TWO YEARS juggling club football with playing for Tipperary's minor hurlers, Long moved to Cork City around the same time as Doyle. He was still battling to get established in the first team there when Steve Coppell, over to watch Doyle play, saw him come on for the last 10 minutes of a game against Cobh Ramblers.

"My main ambition when I went to Cork was to make an Ireland team and when I did that then within a few months Reading came in," says the 19-year-old whose ever-present grin suggests he still can't believe his own good fortune.

Long's Irish debut went well - he came on in the second half of a friendly game away to Italy and helped Seán McCaffrey's side to a 2-0 win - but his impact at Reading last season was, he says, beyond his wildest expectations.

He arrived at the club on the same day as Doyle and within a week of Hunt, but, while the other two settled into the senior squad, he initially found himself settling into life with the youths.

His father, Eamon, died three years ago and, with his brothers and sisters grown up, his mother, Ann, decided to make the move to Reading too.

"Once I heard Doyler was coming over I had no hesitation about it, but my mam coming over has been a big help. The manager's been very supportive too, he always says exactly the same thing, 'go out there and enjoy yourself,' and I have.

"I mean, somebody must have been looking down on us for Doyler and myself to have come to Reading when we did, it's all been a dream really."

Despite having started just one league game last season, Long chipped in with three goals as Reading ran away with the Championship. Within the club he is regarded as a tremendous prospect, so much so that Coppell decided against buying a striker over the summer, believing that the teenager can make an impact even at Premiership level when called upon.

"He (Coppell) told me if I came back in good shape that I'd get a chance and that's the way it turned out," says Long of the club's pre-season games in which he has both played and scored regularly.

"I found out then that they're not signing any strikers, at least until Christmas. He says he has faith in the four he has already and you couldn't ask for any more.

"There was no pressure on me last year and really I don't think there will be this year either. They weren't expecting me to get into the team, but around Christmas I think it was Leroy (Lite) who was injured so he put me on and I haven't looked back.

"I used to be a huge Leeds fan - not last year because we were playing them - but back when I'd watch them all the time in the Premiership and now I can hardly believe I'm going to have that (Premiership) badge on my sleeve.

"I'm looking forward to it, though, to playing against the Irish lads, the likes of Damien Duff, and to playing against the best defenders. I look on it as a challenge, another one, and I've always liked challenges.

"You can't be afraid of anyone or anything and I'm looking forward to getting stuck in and maybe causing a little bit of havoc."

FOR HUNT, the road to Reading has been a little different. Signed as a youngster by Coppell when the former England international was in charge at Crystal Palace, he then followed the manager to Brentford, where he scored 25 times in 136 league appearances over four seasons before falling out with Coppell's successor, Martin Allen, and accepting another offer to join his long-time mentor.

He started just three league games last season, but came on no fewer than 35 times in the league and came to be regarded, he says himself, "as something of a supersub".

Funny, self-confident and, in common with his team-mates, enormously likeable, the 25-year-old had the option of leaving over the summer to play more regularly elsewhere, but says his gut feeling was to hang on and fight for his chance to make an impact at the higher level.

"I have a good relationship with the manager and he said I'd get my chance so I believe him," says Hunt before revealing his thinking on the various contract offers.

"I was tempted," he says with a smile, "because there were three- or four-year deals on the table from good Championship clubs (his new deal at Reading is for one year, an extension dependent on the number of games he plays this season) and one made a very good effort to get me, but, I, well, I want to be on Match of the Day basically. I want to have more coverage and hopefully stand out in the Premiership."

His ambitions don't stop there, for, he argues - not entirely unreasonably - that if he can establish himself at Premiership level then international recognition should not be too far behind.

"Don't get me wrong, I know this season is going to be a big step up. Physically it's more demanding. The pace is quicker. I presume you don't run around as much, but then I don't know to be honest because I've never played in it. I know that you turn on the television and watch some Championship games and they look slow, but then you're in them and you think, 'crikey, this is fast,' so I don't know really what the Premiership is going to be like, but, one thing is for sure, I'll give it a right good go.

"After that, I know what I want. I haven't any international caps yet, but I'd chop my right leg off to get one. That's the sort of fellow I am. . .

"I'm passionate about my country and I'm looking forward to getting in the team because I know I will. I haven't spoken to Stephen Staunton about it, I haven't spoken to anyone, but I believe in my ability and I'll get some caps."

He was, he says, capped just once at underage level having missed another couple of chances because of injury. "I'll make up for that at senior level. If I can't get them when I'm playing in the Premiership and hopefully shining then I might become Nigerian or something. . . do a Graham Stack on it and declare for another country."

DOYLE MIGHT be still getting used to his status as a senior international, but he doesn't sound like he would be terribly surprised to find himself lining out in the same Irish side as Hunt some time soon.

"Why not? Everything else I do Hunty seems to copy me," laughs the 23-year-old. "I sign for the club, he does too. I buy an apartment, he buys one virtually next door. I buy a new car, so does he. And now he's even going out with my cousin (Joanne, to Hunt's obvious delight has just moved over from Wexford)."

His own international rise has been swift and he admits to still feeling a little shock each time he sees his name in an Irish squad. But then last season generally, he concedes, was something of a dream in terms of his own career.

"The move wasn't that hard for me because Reading's a good town and I was already used to living away from home.

"Also, I'm at an age where I have plenty of mates who are more than happy to get on a plane and come over for a game and I'm near to Heathrow so I get to see a lot of my family.

"But when I came over I probably didn't expect to play so soon," he observes, "because I was told that Leroy and Dave (Kitson) were first choice, but unluckily for Dave and luckier for me he got an injury three or four games into the season. I came on, scored and played every league game from then on, started every one.

"This year's going to be very difficult, I know that, and I don't want to be a one-hit wonder. But that's why I've worked hard. When I came over from Cork I made a big effort to improve and now I have to do that again.

"If it doesn't work out I don't want there to be any excuses, I want to have been as good as I possibly could have. It'll take a while to settle into the Premiership, it certainly won't all be as rosy as it was last season, but we'll learn. . . "

A keen Manchester United fan in his teens, he has, he says, cooled on the Premiership giants since becoming a professional himself, but he reckons there will still be a particular buzz about playing at Old Trafford for the first time.

"After that, they're all just football grounds and we've got a great one here so I'll enjoy every game."

As for targets, he cautions, "you don't tell anyone you are going to score 10 or 15 Premiership goals unless you are Thierry Henry. I'll look to my first and when I've done that I'll start trying to get a second."

Last year's tally of 18 in the league will surely prove beyond him, but by this evening perhaps he'll have achieved his first target by scoring against Middlesbrough, Long will have gotten his first taste of the challenge that the Premiership will provide during the coming months and Hunt will get to watch himself on Match of the Day.

The Irish trio's Premiership adventure, after all, is only just beginning and in an era when money almost always equates to might within the game, it's impossible not to leave the Madejski stadium hoping that next summer they're reflecting on a year in which they defied expectations and made their dreams come true.