Euro 2008 qualifying: Emmet Malone talks to a player ready to come into the light.

To look at Damien Duff, as he wanders about the pitch under the midday sun at the Tsirion Stadium in Limassol, it's hard to believe that his diminutive figure could cast much of a shadow. He does, though, and a player who is only too aware of that fact is international and club team-mate Alan O'Brien, who has become accustomed to playing in Duff's shadow back in Newcastle.

On the international front, though, O'Brien is not complaining. A native of Bray who started playing soccer because his Gaelic football coach at Cuala also ran a team in Cabinteely and saw his potential, he is clearly still thrilled and a little bemused to be a part of Steve Staunton's panel.

It's two months since his surprise call-up for the Netherlands game, but that was news that even he admits he initially took for a practical joke and the 21-year-old makes no bones about the fact that he is still coming to terms with this new aspect to his life and career.

Pace is widely seen as his greatest asset at present but the rest of his game, he believes, is catching up and he is working hard every day to capitalise on the opportunity that has been handed to him by Staunton ahead of rivals with more senior club football under their belts.

O'Brien's debut, as it happens, may be remembered mainly for a pass he didn't make when he broke into the Dutch half. However, he ignored options either side in order to go for goal but, he insists with a rueful smile, that was just another part of his education.

"Everybody who watched the game has said it to me since and I've seen it a couple of times now myself so I know I should have passed. The thing is, it wasn't as obvious to me at the time and overall, I thought I did reasonably well."

That, he says, is the reason he wasn't so surprised to be involved against the Germans and though he knows Staunton has more experienced options, including Duff, he is hopeful of getting a run-out at some stage tomorrow night.

Back at Newcastle, though, he realises that the arrival of a player he has spent the last few years admiring from afar has only served to dent his chances of first team football even if it is wonderful to have him around.

The prospect of a loan spell at Wolves has been repeatedly floated, but Glenn Roeder reckons he does not have enough bodies to let the Irishman go and so, until January at least, it seems O'Brien may have to settle for life in the reserves and, of course, the odd international.

"I can't complain because I wasn't a regular in the first team or anything before he arrived and I was looking at him as somebody I could learn from," he says.

"Anyway, you have to believe in your own ability and hope that you can show people what you can do when the opportunity arises to play at that level. I just have to wait my time."

Almost in the next breath, though, he reveals a little impatience over his lack of first team opportunities a season after Graeme Souness gave him his senior debut.

"If I'm not playing regular football at Newcastle then I'd happily go (to Wolves)," he says, "because I really feel that that's what I need to be doing at this stage, to be playing . . . and Wolves are a massive club, it would be a great opportunity for me."

That, though, is for another day. The more immediate opportunity may come in Nicosia where, for a little while tomorrow night, O'Brien may at least get to share Duff's limelight.