Morrison not backward about being a forward character

Tom Humphries talks to Crystal Palace striker Clinton Morrison as he prepares to make his full senior debut for Ireland at Lansdowne Road tonight.

The sound of the suburbs wafts through the airport hotel. Quality. Top man. Innit. To be fair. Clinton Morrison of Tooting and Ireland in the house and providing a neat linguistic twist to the stale world of Irish football cliché.

That, and, as he hopes to demonstrate tonight, an injection of pace and confidence the like of which we haven't seen since, well, since Robbie Keane was a nipper.

Clinton is a product of the modern world, a footballer short on the self-effacing mumbles on which we were reared. A character. Tonight will be his fifth cap, and if his arrival into the full Irish squad was delayed by a little indecent prevarication over whether he would don the white shirt of England, his acceptance into the hearts of fans and fellow players seems to have been instant.

In fact, when he scored a tap-in on his debut appearance against Croatia, Clinton reckons he heard not just warm appreciation but "hero worship".

Tonight, against Denmark, he's anxious to introduce us to his full bag of tricks. His 23 goals for Crystal Palace this season have made it his best year yet, and he feels he's been adding bits and pieces to his game ever since he made his debut as a scoring substitute in Palace's last Premiership game on the final day of the 1997-1998 season.

Back then he was a poacher. Now he's a bit of everything you could ask for.

"Run it down the side and I'm guaranteed to get to it. I've got pace, I like to play with my back to goal. I score goals, but I can bring other people into the play. Hopefully Duffer can get a few balls in.

"He's been brilliant for Blackburn this season and a few good crosses, well, every forward likes that, to be fair."

His easy integration into the squad has been facilitated not just by his happy-go-lucky nature but by his worthwhile contribution to the cause of qualification. Introduced for the final 15 minutes or so in Tehran, and instructed to "run his b***** off", he did that in an atmosphere he describes as "a bit hostile but the best experience of my life, to be fair".

Since then he has been owed a chance to earn his ride to Japan by getting a 90-minute gallop up front, and it was no surprise to hear Mick McCarthy state yesterday that he had come to Dublin intending to start Morrison regardless of rival claims. Morrison appreciates the chance.

"I'm happy to finally get a start. I've played four times and they've all been as a sub. Hopefully I can impress the boss. Only a few know they are definitely going. Everyone has to play for their positions and this is my chance."

He says vaguely that he has learned quite a bit from the senior players in the Irish squad, and notes that his strike partner tonight, Robbie Keane, could teach him a thing or two.

"Robbie is a quality player. Hopefully he can pull me through."

This is all in line with the party policy. Minutes before, Mick McCarthy has resisted an invitation to contrast Keane's lack of match practice with Morrison's free-scoring run in Division One. The levels at which each player operates are different, explained McCarthy. Keane is an established international. Morrison is proving things.

So far Morrison's proofs have been as irrefutable as Pythagoras'. His confidence while wearing a green jersey is half natural, half picked up from that hero worship business.

"Getting that goal was important, it was. All the ongoing that was going on. Would I declare for Ireland? That goal was good. It got a weight off my shoulders straight away."

His mentor these days is the old Palace icon, Ian Wright.

"Wrighty. He was in last Thursday, he done some finishing with the forwards, always encouraging me. He says 'Do well, enjoy it'. If I get a record like his I'll be happy. I'll call him later. I model myself on him. He takes me out, we do things together, he influenced me to play for Ireland.

"He regrets he never went to a World Cup. He says I could go, that I should keep going, keep scoring. It would be nice to have one up on him."

And for an Irish influence these days he has Curtis Fleming, late of Ballybough and St Joseph's CBS, Fairview. If Morrison needs any proof of how lucky he is to be on the cusp of a World Cup with Ireland, he has only to look across the Palace dressing-room at Fleming.

"He realises it. Flem loves playing for his country, and he says to me all the time, take the chance, he says. Work hard. Show them. He knows what it all means. He's top man, Flem. He's teaching me Irish."

What Irish?, we ask the man who once told reporters that Irish people kissed the Emerald Stone to make themselves loquacious.

"Well, I'm struggling with Irish, but I can drink Guinness." He says it with a grin.

His mum, Angela, and his sister Ciara will be in Lansdowne tonight, he reckons. They'd make a better case about Clinton's Irishness than Clinton himself cares to. His most persuasive moments come on the field, and he expects that when the crowd drifts out of Lansdowne tonight there'll be many more converts among them.