He smiles with a mouthful of capped teeth. Opens the door all lean and tanned and athletic. Only the grey hair suggests his age. Tony Cas. That rarest of sights, an old dog with a few new tricks. Remember Vilnius. Rain driving down like nails, pitch all gluepot sticky, floodlights watery weak. No country for old men.

When it went to one apiece Tony Cascarino thought to himself that there could only be one winner out of this hell. Lithuania. Then he just got his head down and kept at it.

Out of nothing, right against the run of things he was gifted two chances. The first came back off the goalkeeper's legs, the second caroomed off the post. He started revising his forecast a little.

He went on a little run from a free kick. Afterwards, when he got back to the box, he hung out in that space he likes. Just too far from goal for a defender to feel comfortable in but just the perfect distance for Tony to take a few strides and make a meaty header from. He noticed that his marker for the night had gone missing.

"This midfielder was on me and I couldn't believe it. I thought if they stick it on my head now he'll not stop me. Next thing Steve Staunton whips it across just perfect and I lost him and got on the end of it. We were 2-1 up and I looked around and they were gone. It was written in their faces. After that we were just playing it out. Killed it."

He was dead afterwards, hardly able to raise his arms to acknowledge the crowd, but his gummy grin told it's own story. Thirtyfive years old, two more goals under the belt and closing in on the all-time Irish record with every celebration.

Tony Cascarino's story is the tallest of tales. Earlier this year, for instance, on that calamitous afternoon in Macedonia, he had been pilloried, unfairly he thought, then taken off at half-time.

That might have been the end of the affair. People were inclined to the view that the big man had no more to give. Except there are more resurrections in Tony Cascarino's story than there are in the bible. Sprung from the Siberia of the bench for three goals in his last two games and he is on the cusp of history. Couldn't happen to a nicer man.

In Teddy Sheringham's fridge there are many Mars bars. Tony Cascarino knows this. He has glimpsed that great frozen confectionery cave. Look into Teddy Sheringham's fridge and you might see nothing but a Giant's Causeway made from bars of chocolate. It sort of defines something for Big Cas. He is not Teddy Sheringham.

"It winds me up. I touch one of those bars and I put on three pounds there and then. Teddy, he never does anything. He eats 20 bars of chocolate, never goes to the gym and he's as hard as a rock, muscle all over. Naturally fit. I had to learn the hard way that I'm not like that."

At Millwall, when goals for Sheringham and Cascarino came as naturally as bodily functions, he first realised that perhaps with work, lots of work, he could be a good player.

Millwall was the right place to learn. Millwall made him graft.

"Training would finish and John Docherty would shout `Hey Tony, where are you going. No no no, my son. C'mon on.' And me, Terry Hurlock and Brian Horne would have to work on our own with him. John would say: `I have to work you to the bone to get a good player out of you."'

John Docherty used tell him that he was one of the best centre forwards in Britain. Tony Cascarino knew it was because he was his player, but Docherty would say that Cas and Teddy together could cause problems for any defence. Sometimes they'd think he was right.

Good years. Men on the move. A couple of seasons in Division One. It rained goals. When he left Millwall one cold February, John Docherty told Cas that before Christmas of 1990 he'd turned down £2 million from Manchester United for him.

"You what?" said Cas.

Not long afterwards, when Cas was packing his bags to head for Aston Villa, John Docherty told him that he had to keep his work rate up, that he couldn't cruise like other guys.

Cas gave him the same bemused look.

Sometimes, bad times, if it wasn't for bad luck he wouldn't have had no luck at all. He moved to Aston Villa from Millwall and to Celtic from Villa. Rented a nice house in Glasgow and then discovered that the estate he was living on was full of Rangers players.

"Tut tut tut," said the terraces.

"I didn't know. Did I," said Cas. "I liked the house. Honest, I just liked the house."

His old mate from Millwall, Terry Hurlock, was in Glasgow too. Playing for Rangers, but not a bluenose about it. He'd give Terry a call and they'd go for drinks. Sometimes Terry would bring his mate. Soon it was all over Glasgow that Cascarino was drinking every night with the Rangers players.

"I couldn't tell Terry not to bring his mate. We're just three fellas having a drink and it's a big deal in Glasgow. Not my fault if his mate is Ally McCoist."

He'd have a little bet now and then, a little flutter on the football, guessing scores etc. Turned out the bookie's was a Rangers bookie's. "But it's the bookie's that's near me. I've just having a little bet," said Cas holding up his hands.

Soon, every few minutes the door is going. The milkman, the postman, passers-by all knocking to give their tuppence hap'worth.

So he got out of Glasgow and shifted to Chelsea. Went to the hospital to get his nagging cartilage sorted out once and for all and didn't play again for 18 months.

"I never got back to fully fit. Eventually it just snapped, but in between I was struggling. I couldn't kick a ball five yards with my right leg the pain was so bad. The crowd were hammering me. On and on. What could I do. You can't turn around and say: `Lay off. I've got a sore leg."'

Chelsea were playing Norwich City one day and Cas played just fine for the first half. Sweet relief. He was coming off a stretch where he had been getting plenty of stick. Now he was playing really well and he could almost see the doubters scratching their chins and wondering.

Coming towards the end of the half Chelsea had a free kick with a look of promise about it. Norwich tried to play the off-side and as the defence ran out one player, right over the other side of the pitch to Cas, stayed in and played the big man on side. The crowd sucked its breath in.

Sweet dreams are made of this. He was standing all on his own just eight yards out and it was just a feathery floated ball by Dennis Wise. Perfect. The work of a moment to chest it down and do the biz.

Instead he leaned forward, almost bent over double and let it come plopping off his head. Unbelievable.

"It was one of those balls. So low I had to duck to head it. No way I could get any power. Just dinked it into the goalie's hands. Nobody could believe it. I couldn't believe it. The crowd went mad. He's really gone and done it now. I've come in at half-time and Dennis Wise said to me that I'd been the best player of the field but . . ."

He remembers the taste of the frustration. Pretty soon he started noticing the voice in the stand. Near the dug out. Witty geezer, plenty to say. Big mouth.

"Ooh, this bloke was hammering me. The thing was there was only about 10,000 there and you could hear everything he said. And this geezer was funny. That was the worst. I was kind of chuckling to myself, but getting really steamed up at the same time.

"I remember, coming out for the start of the second half and he went in this huge voice: `Oy, Cascarino! You, Cascarino! You're not still on are you. Oh no. I can't believe this. He's still on.' And he's turned to the crowd and it's like a bit of a panto. `Can you believe 'e's still on?'

"So it's going on all through the second half and I can hear him and eventually I say to him: `If you've got a problem with me I'll see you afterwards.' Something I shouldn't have done. I mean he was a big lump to start with. I never saw him again."

It would have been easy to go under, and fill his lungs with bitterness in the quietude of reserve team football.

"I didn't want to do that. You talk to friends and family. They know that is happening to you. They are coming every week, knowing that you are getting hammered. I don't think it was easy for them to take. I'm glad that I have come through it. Too easy to go the other way." He took a decision. To keep in plain sight.

"If I'm having a bad game I'm going to have a nightmare. I'm not going to stop wanting the ball. That's the easy option. It caused me more problems because I was so determined to keep having the ball. You have the ball five times, give it away once and they hammer you. Give it away five times . . . It was hard to win them over. I had nightmares, lots of them, but eventually they noticed that at least I wasn't hiding."

Something happened, they came to a turning. They played Everton in a high-scoring draw and Cas did fine and fans streamed towards him afterwards and shook his hand.

"I'd done well and then not long after that Robert Fleck came and it didn't work for him and he took a lot of what I'd taken. He took it off my shoulders. Sometimes the two of us would play together and confuse them. They couldn't work out who they hated most."

When it came time to leave, he left with his head high. He made the two goals against Luton which accessed the Cup final for Chelsea and scored another four between then and the final before getting dropped for the big day.

"Glenn Hoddle wanted to play two small men up front. He was decent about it and when I left he gave me the free (transfer). I wasn't ready to drop down to a small club. I just didn't want to end like that. I could have gone to Blackpool, but I held on. I thought I could make a contribution. Then Marseilles happened."

He can remember at the lowest point of that long trough period reading a throwaway quote from Howard Wilkinson which stopped him in his tracks. The Yorkshire drill sergeant was quoted to the effect that Cas was lazy and not good enough. "He described Savo Milosevic, who was having a really bad time at Villa, well he described him as being `a good Tony Cascarino'. And I knew what he meant. I think I made the rod for my own back. There was a perception that I'd had a few good moves and I wasn't really that interested. Maybe they were right. At the end of the day thought I wanted to come back and prove people wrong."

He was reconstructed as a footballer in Marseilles. More accurate to say that he reconstructed himself. French habits suited him. He trains twice a day now on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and once a day on Thursday and Friday. Does speed work and ball work and goes about his business with a confidence he maybe hasn't had since Millwall.

"I went to Paris to meet Bernard Tapie. He took me through this house with each room decorated in the fashion of a different period. I'm in awe. I gave him what I wanted, the money and all written on a piece of paper. He took one look at it and threw it in the bin and gave me this look like `Is that all?' I was kicking myself I hadn't asked for more."

He says he grew up in France. The place knocked the kiddishness out of him. People expected men who were paid as professionals to act that way. He absorbed the language haltingly, but took to the football culture quickly. Saw strange sights and met strange people. We would pay a lot of money for the Tony and Tapie tapes.

The first time Tony Cascarino and Bernard Tapie met after his signing, the Frenchman pursed his lips and splayed his fingers.

"So Tonee, which British players are you like?"

And Tony thought to himself that perhaps Mark Hately was the model of centre forward with which Tapie would be most familiar, but Tapie rambled on.

"I hope not like Hately . . . Hoddle? Yes. Waddle? Yes. Stevens? Yes. But not like Hately, please not like Hateley."

"Sorry," thought Cascarino, "I'm like Hately."

Tapie's face never creased. Cascarino made himself into an amalgam of all the names mentioned. Mostly Hately, though.

"Strange man," he says of Tapie. "He'd do things like that just to see how you'd react. One night in Greece I was speaking to a journalist before we played Olympiakos. Tapie decided I was speaking with an official and he'd given me a bribe. There was a bit of a row. I couldn't believe it. Of course we go out and I miss two sitters. Big row afterwards. The players had to get between us."

Then a few weeks later, before Marseilles play Caen, Tapie calls Tony into the showers. Needs a quiet word. Looks all Clouseau conspiratorial.

"Tony," he says, "it's OK tonight. The goalkeeper is with me."

"What?" says Tony. "What do you mean the goalkeeper is with you?"

"The goalkeeper is with me. Try every shot."

So Cascarino lashes five or six at the Caen goalkeeper in the first half, and he's springheeled and brilliant and never beaten. Big Cas is wondering how much Tapie has paid when it dawns on him.

"He never bribed the 'keeper. The 'keeper was never with him. He just enjoyed going around saying things like that. Being the enigma. Making people wonder about him."

He loved those times. Sixty-five thousand people in the velodrome whooping it up. Being well known and much loved in a major city. It's a secret ambition of his to go back there and play once more.

Next year could be the year. Nancy, his team, are seven points clear at the top of the French second division. They beat second placed Lorient last week and beat them comfortably. Better still, Big Cas is flying.

He plays now at the same weight he was when he was 19. Watches what he eats, goes out for runs. La vie en rose.

"Andy (Townsend) makes jokes about me not going out with the lads anymore. I can't. Ten years ago on a day off like this I'd have gone down the pub for lunch and a few pints. Instead I went for a run. I'm not the same player I was. I've had to sacrifice. I do find it hard, but I've added three or four years to my career. Winning and playing outweighs the sacrifices. If we don't qualify for the World Cup maybe there is no more for me. I can't get another World Cup. It's lovely and rosy people talking about the record. If we lose these two games (the two-leg play-off) maybe I'll never play for Ireland again. That's what it means to me. More than the record."

He talks on. About being a bad loser in an easy-going guy's body. About life after football. About the days as a teenager working the London building sites with dissolute Irishmen. Wonder where they all are now.

LONG ROAD. Tall story. He thought his Ireland days were over once or twice. Having played under Eoin Hand he was left out of the first 19 Irish squads Jack Charlton picked. Charlton watched Leeds lose to Millwall one night and changed his mind about the big man.

He was understudy to Frank Stapleton and then Niall Quinn came along. He has shared so many matches with Quinn that they have made a joke out of it.

"If Niall is on from the start he'll say: `Good luck Cas, See you in an hour mate."'

On bad days big guys are always the fall guys. Cas once scored six in five games for Charlton and still got dropped. When the Irish team froze against Egypt in 1990 it was Cas who paid the price and got dropped, even though he had been playing well for maybe a dozen games. When the team stank the place out in Macedonia it was Cas who got called ashore.

Still he keeps on coming and surrendering 120 per cent of himself to the cause. There is nothing about the whole long, green adventure that he hasn't loved. Nothing he would trade away. It's his inheritance.

Michael Joseph O'Malley from Westport left Ireland when he was 15. His daughter, Therese, is Tony's Mum.

When Tony was young, growing tall in Kent, Michael Joseph O'Malley worked the building sites. He lost the sight in one eye when he was still a foreman and then in old age he bent over one day and pulled the retina out of the other eye and never saw again. He lived in the house with Tony's Mum and Dad in Kent. Tony used take his blind grandad down the pub in the afternoons. He'd wait till Tony came home from school and it would be "Tony do ya fancy a walk".

Of course the walk always went the same place and in the pub Tony would sit the old man down and fetch him a stream of black and tans ("Just one more Tony") and listen to the stories.

He died not long before the first time that Tony wore an Irish jersey. He wasn't around for that day and he hasn't been there for this glorious closing chapter to the big man's career, when he at last has proved everyone wrong. They'll think of him on Wednesday when Tony takes his teeth out and pulls his green jersey on and chases after the record and one more summer in the sun.