Alan McLoughlin's answer had the ring of conviction when somebody had the temerity to question his physical capacity for a tough game in Skopje on Saturday.

"I'm no hard man," he admitted "but I'm no fairy either. I'm certainly not fazed by the challenge."

Back in Jack Charlton's time the perception was of a gifted player breaking forward from midfield but lacking the strength to work across the line in the manner demanded by Carlton. Mick McCarthy had a different agenda and the Portsmouth player, thriving in a new climate of opportunity, did well enough to be named as the winner of the coveted Opel Player of the Year award two years ago.

It ought to have been the launch pad for an even bigger year in 1998. But somehow it didn't happen for him and in that there were shades of another disarming experience some four years earlier.

Even those on the periphery of football have no difficulty in recalling the flamboyant strike which earned the Republic a 1-1 draw with Northern Ireland on an ill-tempered night at Windsor Park in November, 1993 and a place in the World Cup finals in the United States the following summer.

It is less easy to explain how it all went so cruelly wrong for him after that and how his exasperation reached the point where barely 12 months later he was ready to turn his back on international football.

"I thought that goal in Belfast would open a few doors for me but I was wrong," he says. "I may have scored the goal which got us to the World Cup finals but it still didn't count for anything when the team was picked the following year."

Even under McCarthy, a manager who was quick to acknowledge the qualities he offered in a changed match plan, there was disappointment. But now it was different.

"Mick McCarthy has given me more chances than I ever had in the past and I like to think that I've repaid him," he says. "But I have no problems with him if he leaves me out."

McLoughlin, a mild mannered man who has scored almost 100 goals from midfield in a career encompassing close on 650 games, betrays just a hint of annoyance when he is dismissed exclusively as an attacking player.

"For a long time I played just behind the front two at Portsmouth but all that changed a couple of years ago. Now I'm likely to turn up in much deeper areas of the pitch and in that sense my game has developed with the years."

Nor will he be unduly influenced by the pressures building up around a game which can qualify Ireland for the European finals for the first time in 12 years.

"I've been involved in crucial relegation games for Portsmouth on the last day of each of the last two seasons. And that's what you call real pressure. Then you're playing for your job and in some cases for the club's very survival. When you've been through those kind of situations international games, even the biggest of them don't faze you.

"I enjoy the hype, the build up, the pre-match tension. And if I'm lucky enough to be selected I've enough self belief to know that I'll not let anybody down."