English FA Premiership:Reading's Kevin Doyle tells Jon Brodkinhow Gaelic football helped his career.

Kevin Doyle mentions the words "strange" and "mad". From a dressingroom at Reading's training centre the striker is explaining how it feels to be the Premiership's top scorer. Almost halfway through his first top-flight campaign his eight league goals mean he jointly leads the way with Didier Drogba and Nwankwo Kanu. That pair have between them won four Premiership titles and a European Cup. Doyle, with a Championship and an National League title, can be forgiven for grinning. "It's mad," he says.

"You see them there and don't really know what to think." Doyle's start is emblematic of the ease with which Reading have taken to the Premiership, and all the more extraordinary given that 18 months ago he was turning out for Cork City. Yet if the 23-year-old seems still to be absorbing the latest step in his dramatic rise, following 19 goals last season, his outlook is telling. A table showing the scoring chart may look tempting to keep for posterity, but he has no intention of this being a one-off.

"My brother was on about taking a picture on his phone off Sky Sports News, but I didn't want to do it because then you are sort of thinking to yourself 'Take it now because I won't see that again'," says Doyle. "So I've tried not to do that. I'd like it there this year, next year and the year after."

Before Wednesday's defeat at Newcastle, Doyle had scored in five games in a row, including his first goal for the Republic of Ireland. Such feats were unimaginable when Steve Coppell signed him from Cork for £78,000 in June 2005 but Doyle realises the hard work must continue today at Watford and beyond.

"For me it's changed for the good in the past year and a half but I know that if it can go upwards that quickly, it can go backwards that quickly. I honestly don't want to get carried away. I always have that feeling that it could be taken away as quickly as it came. I'm not in any way cocky."

That is unmistakeable. What is not guessable is how close Doyle came to ignoring a soccer career. As a youngster in Wexford the game vied for his affection with Gaelic football, in which he won titles for school, club and county. So how close was he to following the Gaelic football route? "Very close," he says. "I enjoyed it as much as soccer. When I was 17 it was 50-50, probably. I was probably doing better at Gaelic football at the time than at soccer so there was pressure on me from people to play Gaelic football (and) pressure on me from people to play soccer.

"In the end because soccer was the first thing I played - my first love - I said I would stick to that. I gave it two years when I was 17 to see how I got on. I kept giving it another year for two or three years until I got my move here. Obviously I'm pretty glad I did pick it. There was a stage when it was just a matter of days of going one way or the other."

That came when St Patrick's Athletic were interested in him, and he was invited into Wexford's under-21 football squad. Doyle drove to Wexford's training ground but never got out of his car. "It was for the county team, the highest level in Gaelic football," he recalls. "I went to the training ground and just sat in the car. It was a Sunday morning and it was raining and I just decided 'No' and went home. I don't think it was the rain, in all honesty. I don't know what it was. If I had gone that day I think I would have been stuck and that would have been it."

Instead Doyle signed for St Pat's and then moved to Cork, where Reading shirts are selling like never before. He believes the Gaelic football experience has benefited him. "It toughens you up and gets you used to being knocked over," he says. "It helps me a lot, maybe too much to be honest because when I get knocked over now I don't complain a lot."

Doyle is convinced he also gained from leaving Ireland at 21, rather than at a much younger age. The two months he spent training with Torino at 16 (never with a view to a move) not only helped his technique, as he got his first proper coaching there, but taught him he would have been unhappy then at an English club. "I did all my growing up at home, I went out and enjoyed myself, finished my schooling, worked as well," he says.

"I had a job for a while. I've done all stuff, got it out of the way, and now I'm playing in the Premiership. If I had come over at 15 or 16, I'm sure I would have been homesick."

Doyle's job was working in his parents' pub, where some of his Reading and Ireland jerseys are proudly displayed. He also worked in the stables where his father breeds racehorses. "I helped out a lot, although my father would probably say that I didn't do enough," he says. "It's not enjoyable when it's a wet, windy day but during the summer it's nice."

The Doyle family turned to horses and pub after the death of one of Kevin's brothers, Bernard, from testicular cancer in 1993 at 21. "It was tough and it made us move house and my father changed his business," Doyle says. "He had run a haulage business for years and my brother worked in it and was going to take it over. Whenever something good happens to me now - a penalty situation, or whatever, and I'm under pressure - my mother's always looking to the skies and saying a little prayer to my brother. He's working overtime the last couple of years."

• Guardian Service