Tom Humphries on how the winger may seem to be dancing diffidently through Chelsea's season but has had to work hard for things to be this good

Midday on Tuesday. He slips from a taxi and comes slouching towards reception without fuss or fanfare. His room key is ready and waiting. "Thanks." And he's gone. No need for credit cards to be running through machines or for questions about breakfast or parking or alarm calls. He travels light.

On the way to his room he meets Joe Walsh, the kitman. "Don't call me for dinner, Joe," he says.

Sleep. He regrets ever having mentioned sleep in an interview some years ago and laughs at the image he has created of himself as some sort of sloe-eyed Eeyore character who dozes his way through the intervals which punctuate his encounters with a football. Still, it has to be said, Damien Duff sleeps a lot. Were sleeping a sport he'd be world class.

He goes to his room and he sleeps. Some time later a trayful of room service attempts to gain entry to that room. It is rebuffed. Too kipped out. "Thanks."

A couple of hours on and he is up and about, standing in for the official team photograph taken on the sward at the back of the hotel and then off to Malahide for training. Not for the first time it strikes everyone watching that the contact of a football with Damien Duff's person seems to send a jolting current of electricity through him. When he hasn't a ball at his feet he looks permanently in repose. Content and restful.

A football brings him to life but not in the same way as the prospect of an interview does. Different sorts of animation. He is a fugitive from attention, constantly fleeing his own fame. You approach him across the lobby, nevertheless. You have authority to act.

"Howya," he says. "Howya," you reply, "how are things?" His eyes have narrowed though, pre-empting you.

"We're not doing this today are we?" he says. If a face could sound an alarm siren Damien Duff's would be in a full state of emergency now and cars would be pulling over to the side of the road to let him escape at full speed.

"Well, no. We can leave it for a day or two." "Grand," he says, well pleased by this suggestion. "We'll do it in Israel then, yeah."

Visibly relieved, he restores himself to the company of his team-mates. Thursday in Israel! Getting Damien Duff into an interview situation is like getting a kid with a sweet tooth into a dentist's chair during a world anaesthetics shortage.

"I'll try but you know what he's like," Pat Devlin had said when you called to ask him about the prospect of an interview with his friend, client and protege.

"He's the worst in the world," laughed Pat, "a divil." We do know what he's like. Divilish, certainly. The best company in the world though, the essence of decency, the antithesis of the spoiled Premiership superstar. Just a young fella who off the field is very backward about coming forward.

Shy. Reticent. Keeps himself to himself in an almost miserly way. Never saw a tape recorder he liked the look of. Brimful of his own humility.

Chelsea had a press day recently for one of their big European nights. Duffer was corralled through the front door and then slipped straight out the back door. A journalist gave pursuit, caught him and wrestled him to the ground like a cowboy roping a steer. He extracted a quote or two. It wasn't an easy transaction for either party. They both came away feeling a bit dirty.

So, Israel. Another day. Another hotel lobby. He spots you as he emerges from the team bus with his boots in his hand. He smiles but his eyes flicker. Can't be time for that postponed dental appointment already? Hot damn.

It is though. He has a bite to eat and finally you get him to a seat on the quiet side of a lobby big enough to hold a seven-a-side in. You tell him to relax but he sits lightly on the chair as if leaning back will cause it to break. You tell him that this won't hurt a bit - but every dentist says that.

You switch the mini-disc machine on. He winces. You haven't asked him anything yet. You have lots of interesting questions with which to bamboozle him but he needs a warm-up. There is a long pause. Duffer looks at the mini-disc machine. Infernal contraption! Interviewer looks at Duffer. Hmmm. Fifteen years of accumulated interviewing technique. You summon every scintilla of experience and interrogative know-how. You have ways of making him talk. Let the bamboozling begin! Finally you hit him with your best shot.

"So, eh, how are things?" For a second everyone passing through the lobby freezes. Everyone glances across in wonder. Not just Irish fans. Locals too. "How are things?" The most dazzling opening question ever asked.

And to Duffer. What impudence! What derring-do! There was a time when coming on these trips with the Ireland team essentially meant travelling in the wash of Roy Keane. All anyone wanted to know about was Roy Keane, Roy Keane, Roy Keane. Duffer's pre-eminence is threatening those levels now, however. Chelsea. The Champions League. He's gone big time. A marquee name in a Broadway production.

And he's pondering your multi-faceted question. More philosophical inquiry than question really. So. How. Are. Things.

How shall we define things? We're paused over that one. The opening gambit in what will be a beautifully played chess game.

"Ah, things are grand," he says cautiously. "Going all right. So many games." He pauses.

"How are things, yourself."

Another pause. Gasps in the lobby. Premiership superstars aren't suppose to ask hacks how things are. You're instinct is to start again. Ask him the ingenious "how are things" question but with the mini-disc machine switched off. Foreplay.

Get him humming.

It doesn't take long for a fan to interrupt this breakdown in communication. A middle-aged Israeli woman in a flamboyant red blouse approaches, bearing in her hand a white beer mat. Can he please sign this. "Of course, of course." He thanks her for asking.

She tells him that he is her daughter's hero. He blushes madly although he must be used to this sort of thing by now. The Argentine stewardess on the flight to Tel Aviv the previous day had been so besotted by his Dufferesque "cuteness" she had to go public on the matter as we disembarked.

"I hope you win on Saturday," says the Israeli lady as she backs away, bowing in an oriental manner as she goes.

He smiles and thanks her again.

"You don't think she meant that, do ya," he says as she recedes, "about hoping we win?" Who knows? Life is full of sweet mystery. Damien Duff plays football. About once in a blue moon he does interviews. He doesn't know why. That, by the way, is your second question, the searing follow-up to "how are things?" "So, why do you do interviews?"

"Pat rang and asked me would I do it," he says, treating this like a genuinely interesting line of interrogation. "He caught me at an off moment. I don't really know why I said I'd do it. But, sure . . . " he just trails off.

You glance down at your lovely little mini-disc machine, which, optimistically, is set to record these priceless exchanges at half speed, thus giving you three hours of perfectly recorded conversation. Hmmm.

"So," you say. You're in Beazer Homes League form today. "Things are good?"

"Ah, yeah. Lots of games. Nothing else up. Just plugging away. It feels like a treadmill at times. I'm not used to playing that many games. I've had injuries and all that in the past seasons. This season - touch wood - it's going well, injury-wise.

"I've played an awful lot of games compared to what I would usually play."

There you go. See. A 58-word answer to your third question. Not Parkie but not quite Alan Partridge either. Up your game a bit and Duffer will play ball.

"Wow," you gush, girlishly, "so, how many games have you played then?"

For the record, he reckons he's played 45 games or so this year, so far. By March, between hamstring tweaks and shoulder injuries and all the other mandatory pitstops he's usually around the20 mark. He enjoys the business of being busy.

"What do you put the lack of injuries down to?"

"I had the operation in the summer and it's been all strengthening work since then. In the past there's been a lot of things like hamstrings and what have ya. I put it down to the training at the club and all the work the gaffer does. I benefit from that really."

This is the essential charm of Damien Duff. He is at the centre of a media storm and his hair isn't even blowing in the wind. Chelsea are the story of the football year, a constant, unceasing drama which has changed the customary narrative of Premiership seasons, relegating the houses of Highbury and Old Trafford to the status of weary sub-plots. Mourinho is the lead player, a bespoke genius who acts as a lightning rod in the tempest of tabloid fury and speculation.

To Damien Duff it's just Chelsea and the gaffer. It's not even that. It's just football. It could be Lourdes Celtic. Or St Kevin's. Or Blackburn reserves. What matters most is when it's Saturday afternoon and the clock has slipped past 4.30 and you've the ball at your feet and two men to beat. It's all still as simple, as beautiful and as mesmerising as that. If that's all you capture on the mini-disc machine, so be it. That's the man.

"It doesn't intrude at all," he says when you ask him if the maelstrom of publicity around the club ever gets inside his head. "The tabloids are after the gaffer, I suppose. He takes the hits for everyone. I stay out of it. I always have done.

"Obviously Chelsea is a different world to Blackburn but for me this is the first proper interview I've done in God knows how long. I can't remember the last time I sat down with a journalist. I know Chelsea is different, especially this year, but I'm just the same old me."

He has no part in the Premiership Babylon. He doesn't treat with agents or spivs or Ferrari salesmen or Flash Harrys. He doesn't have any scores to settle, women to roast or bling to wear. You can skip to the end of this interview safe in the knowledge that there is no fodder for a tabloid headline ANGRY DUFF SLAMS XXXX!

"I don't have time for it," he says, apologetically. "I don't know. I've no time for that stuff. I'd say I just come across as an ignoramus to those kind of people. Agents and shit. I live out near the new training ground. We all live about 40 minutes outside London. I don't go into London that much. I don't be near that world to be honest. I have the quiet life."

Thus it is that he has no tales to tell other than his own, which he keeps sparse and private. He is immune to the madness but he has seen the way it works, how a careless word sparks a tinderbox. So if he speaks well of Chelsea, he makes a detour to point out that by speaking well of Chelsea he is not deriding Blackburn, which he loved and adored.

The Chelsea he joined are metamorphosing into a world-class outfit with world-class facilities. It's a world away from Lancashire but he would never disparage.

He knows other things too. Frailty, thy name is football. He is lauded and worshipped now, part of the only genuine and functioning side of galacticos the world game has, but at the start of the season he was looking down both barrels. Failure and injury were about to blow him away.

Hard times. When you are impervious to everything but football and family it is no consolation to be a millionaire and to be sitting at home in your millionaire's house on a Saturday afternoon when there are men out there on pitches up and down England living your dream. You pick up the Sundays and you notice that hardly anybody is lamenting your absence. It struck him then that it could all be taken away just like that. Football never needs you as much as you need it.

"It was hard at first this season," he says. He's slightly animated by the thought of it but careful not to be seen to make too big a deal of it. "I was coming back from my shoulder injury and I thought I was fit but I don't think the gaffer thought I was fit. Either that or he thought I was fit but he thought I wasn't good enough. Obviously it wasn't nice not getting into the squads, or what have you. That was hard. That hit me, all right. I just kept working, working away really hard."

And that was it. He didn't rub a water bottle and have a genie suddenly pop out. There was no Damascus moment. People close to him, and other players at the club, said he should go and speak to Jose Mourinho, to ask him what was happening.

Duffer and Jose Mourinho are at the opposite ends of the personality spectrum, however.

"Everyone was saying to me that I should go and have a chat with him. That's never been me either. I wanted to just keep working hard. Eventually he pulled me aside He wouldn't pull you aside that much. I've only really had that one chat one-on-one with him. Just that once back at the start of the season. "

"What did he say?"

"We just had a chat. A couple of weeks later I was back in the team."

"So, what did he say?"

"I wouldn't like to mention it."

At this point you want to weep and say puh-lease mention it, puh-lease, but politely Duffer's face tells you the conversation was private. So, instead you make a stab at guessing. You put yourself in Mourinho's expensive shoes. Limited English.

Bright man. And Duffer. Bright man too. Better English but not willing to use it.

"Keep working hard? Did he say that?" "Not exactly."

"You're on the way out? Did he say that?"

"Can't say really."

"Did you come out of the chat feeling happier?"

"Not happier. No."

"Worried?"

"A bit of that. Yeah."

"Panicky?"

"More determined. I decided I wanted to stay at Chelsea as long as I can. Anywhere else will be a step down. It would break my heart to know I was leaving and going down. I'll just keep working hard. I knew after that I was playing for my future. I was running my heart out."

"Playing for your future?"

"I still think that now. Every day, even in training. I look at the resources Chelsea have. There's no slacking off. That's the way I've been brought up by the family."

His restoration to the team marked the end of a long fallow period. He tells the story of his Tuesday night in Aldershot last year, playing for Chelsea reserves against West Ham reserves on a badly ploughed hell-hole of a pitch. He was miserable.

He was playing poorly. He'd touched the ball three times in the 40 minutes he had been on. None of the three touches had excited the man and his dog who together made up the attendance.

Then a local newspaper reporter asked him what he thought of the big news of the day. Chelsea had signed Arjen Robben. The Dutch Duffer. Only younger. And of course Dutch. If a team signed Quasimodo and he was Dutch it would seem glamorous.

"Even before they signed Arjen I was at the lowest point in my career. I was at Chelsea, had just gone for a lot of money and was out for God knows how long, three or four months with my shoulder. Then that night playing on that shitty pitch in Aldershot I did a little interview afterwards and I said it was a kick in the teeth. I wasn't in the best of moods."

It's not as if he went out and bought an Uzi and went crazy in some little town in Surrey but he seems to genuinely regret letting his feelings slip.

"People have used that quote a lot," he says, shaking his head.

His resurrection, his emergence from the slough of quiet despair, has been a model for our crazy times, the sort of thing which brings you back to the faith. He didn't call an agent or the tabloids or the off-licence. He just worked. He accepted playing on the other side of the field. He accepted he'd have to do whatever it took to be in the team. Uncomplainingly. Happily.

When his shoulder got better he submitted to a weights regime, which he sticks to zealously. At the start of this season Arjen Robben was injured. Damien Duff still wasn't getting in the squad.

"I was sitting at home on a Saturday watching Soccer Saturday. I was being a real t*** with my family and friends and girlfriend. I suppose that's what football means to me. "

Now he's back. In love more than ever. He loves the season Chelsea are having. He loves the life he lives, lives the life he loves. Simple. He even loves thegaffer.

"We all love him. He's the man. He's the best manager around, in my view. He can be very funny. Even the Liverpool thing, he got slaughtered in the press for that. It was a bit of crack. I thought it was funny myself. Not being biased but people go overboard. It's funny to sit back and watch it."

He talks with cautious enthusiasm (or rather, enthusiastic caution) about the night against Barcelona in the Champions League, how himself and the lads knew within five, ten minutes of the game in the Nou Camp how the return would pan out.

And that brief feeling of footballing omnipotence, that fleeting but perfect moment when Chelsea went three up in 20-something minutes and Duffer had everyone close to home sitting in the stands and it was the stuff you dream about when you're a young fella scuffing about in Ballyboden.

Then as if he's forgotten himself for a moment he says the days which gave him the greatest satisfaction were those games when he worked his way back into the side and they were scratching out workmanlike results in places like Ewood Park.

"Just showed that we weren't all flash. That we could do the graft too."

That's the motif running through it all. The benefits of work, patience and humility. The mini-disc never fills.

A man from the People's Republic of Roy interrupts with a request for the signing of jerseys. Damien Duff says he'll come across the lobby and sign the garments in a minute. It would be too bad-mannered to interrupt the flagging interview but too flash to refuse to sign.

This week back in the beloved green jersey he sits as usual at the heart of the squad. Beloved. He was 26 recently, metamorphosing into a senior player, yet there is that lingering sense about him. The team are there to protect him.

You ask him if he has more to say these days at team meetings. He is emphatic on this. "No! I don't say anything. I know I'm 26 now. A bit old to be considered 'potential'. There's more responsibility, I suppose. I'm getting close to being put on the old team when we play old v young at training. I don't talk at meetings.

"You don't get a word in with Brian anyway. I just can't sit still at team meetings. I fidget. Same as ever."

These past few trips he's fallen into a card school with Robbie Keane and a couple of other lads. Somehow you don't see Duffer as one of the world's most devious poker players. Fortunately for his bank manager, neither does he.

"The first two days this week haven't gone well. I'll have the next few days in bed with the DVDs. Cheaper. "

Tonight he expects the lads will give it socks. He would be disappointed with a draw. His passion doesn't allow for anything but absolute fulfilment.

"We've watched the Israelis a lot on DVD. It's a massive game for us both but with the quality we have, we need to come in here and win."

There you have it.

The pay-off.

Cocksure Duff Slams Israeli Pretenders!

"We're Quality" Rails Goldenboy Duff . . . You feel grubby and soiled for your part in having elicited such intemperate words from such a quiet, decent guy.

Post-quotal, Duffer leans back in the chair for the first time. He's not spent though.

"Of course they've a right to say the same thing and you have to respect that," he adds.

The mini-disc recorder winces. Switches itself off.

So to does Duffer, saving himself again for when Saturday comes.