Emmet Malone meets a player who has taken a tortuous route to Sunday's big game

St Patrick's Athletic may have journeyed no farther than Dublin's northside on the way to Sunday's final of the Carlsberg-sponsored FAI Cup, but the club's most recent recruit has amassed a few more miles on his strange and not so scenic route to Lansdowne Road.

For Clive Delaney the summer months must seem, even now, like a blur, spent hurtling around Britain in search of a deal that would guarantee his future in full-time football.

After a promising few months at West Ham, the 23-year-old almost agreed a deal that would have kept him at Upton Park for at least another year. But the financial turmoil that engulfed the club at the end of last season resulted in the deal he had been offered being withdrawn in the wake of relegation, and so Delaney, keen to see what might be on offer elsewhere, took to the road, making appearances at eight clubs in England and Scotland before deciding his future lay back home in Dublin.

The best offer he received came from much farther a field and involved spending 18 months in Korea, where former Chelsea boss Ian Porterfield was attempting to rebuild a Busan I'cons team that had fared poorly in the previous season's league. Given just 24 hours to make a decision on what would have been a lucrative move, Delaney decided to play safe and come home in order to resume studying accountancy with PricewaterhouseCoopers.

A couple of months on and there are no regrets as he considers what might have been and anticipates a weekend that may yield the first winner's medal of his senior career.

"It's all a bit strange being back here after the experience of living what was a very different lifestyle for a few months, but I think I'd look back on the whole thing in a very positive way," says the former under-21 international defender.

"It was great to play in the stadiums I played in and with the players I met. It was a good experience, and if the circumstances had been different with West Ham I could have still been there. They offered me a deal, but you never accept the first offer, do you, and because of that it didn't work out.

"When it came to looking around for another club, though, I was always in a stronger position than a lot of the other lads at trials over there. I was halfway through a three-year contract with PWC and had only taken a six-month break to see how things went over in England.

"In the end, the offer from Korea was interesting, but there were big cultural and lifestyle considerations. I'd never even talked to the manager, the whole thing came through my agent, and it was so far away. I just didn't have the time to weigh it up properly and so, in the circumstances, it wasn't a hard decision to come back."

Now, a matter of a few weeks on, Delaney is hoping his recent performances for Eamonn Collins's side have earned him one of the two central-defensive slots long occupied by Colm Foley and Darragh Maguire.

"When I came in," he says, "Colm was injured so I got my place, but then I tore the ligaments in my ankle. I missed two or three weeks and it affected my fitness for longer than that, so I've only really been back in the picture in the last few weeks.

"Obviously I'd love to play but, whatever happens, to be involved in a cup final is wonderful. It's certainly something I didn't expect a couple of months back, and so when we train we work hard and have a bit of fun. The manager gets to pick the team and whether I'm in or not I'll be 100 per cent behind everyone and desperate for the club to win."

Delaney's only previous cup final came with UCD a couple of seasons back, when the students faced his current club in the League Cup and St Patrick's lifted the silverware. The build-up this time has, he admits, been a little more intense - but it has been put in perspective too by the news that Charles Mbabazi Livingstone has had to retire due to heart problems.

"There's nothing you can say when something like that happens and nothing really that any of us can do except to hope that we can draw some sort of extra motivation from the situation and win it for him."

After what has been a bad week for the club, the victory would certainly put smiles back on the faces of supporters who have waited a long, long time for their club to score another cup success. For Delaney, it would provide both a remarkable ending to a memorable adventure and a fine start to the next stage of a career that still promises so much.