They'll whistle a happy tune and try to convince you otherwise but this past week in Cyprus will account for some of the more bizarre entries in the FAI's holiday scrapbook when they dust it down in years to come.

Everything is off-kilter in Limassol, this out-of-season holiday resort. Mick McCarthy's quiet, dignified grief for his dad touches everyone as he sets about his work. The mood is made more sombre by the new arrivals who bring the headlines from the country they left behind. Two sick sheep cause a lot of shaking heads.

Other things go on forever, of course. Bernard O'Byrne is here, larger than life, as he cruises past whispering knots of detractors. And Robbie Keane! He cuts through and you can't see the kid in his face. He is a man with man's worries. A fully-fledged, fully-grown superstar-man.

And Ian Harte! In the lobby chewing the fat to the media. As a rule during the opening scenes of what promises to be an epic Irish career, Ian Harte has been all pictures, no sound. Even in Amsterdam on that almost glorious evening last autumn he came chirruping out of the dressingroom and when we quotebeggars stretched forward with our tape recorders he just said: "I'm okay, lads" and kept walking.

The reticence with the media is well-founded, too. Some time ago a freelance journalist came to interview Harte on behalf of a popular soccer magazine. During the off-the-record chat which always precedes and concludes such meetings they talked about where Harte was from. He was asked if he went home much and he said he did, but the last time he was there he was in a pub with his wife to be and somebody came in and spat on his arm.

This minor incident inflated itself in print to "Leeds star fearing for his life in home town", which not surprisingly caused some distress for Leeds star's family, who are still living happily in aforementioned home town. The magazine apologised and Harte decided that for the time being the easiest way to avoid being misquoted was not to be quoted at all.

Now, at the unlikeliest of times, with his peers, friends and team-mates, Lee Bowyer and Jonathan Woodgate, on trial in Hull and Ireland treading on eggshells, well, Ian Harte is open for business, happy to sit and talk. Decent company he makes, too.

Today he will play for Ireland again, a situation which at 23 has become almost indecently commonplace for him. This is his third qualification campaign and he, almost above all others, has become a totem of the Mick McCarthy era. At club level he has thrived also. And why wouldn't he? After a tentative if precocious start in the 1995/1996 season when he made the Leeds first team four times, he fell into a pattern of having more international caps than first team appearances.

That's changed, of course. At Leeds he has seen off the challenges of Danny Granville and Dominic Matteo for his job while at international level he has his slot on the left side of defence pretty much nailed down having served a stormy apprenticeship as a makeshift centre half, back when times were hard and the criticisms were fast and loose.

"Really you'd play anywhere. I was young and Mick said you'll be centre half. I had no say, I wasn't going to put up my hand and say, sorry, I'm a left back so I'm going to play left back. Mick made the decision so I went out and did it. I knew it wasn't my best position but someone had to go out and play there."

There were some rough nights to follow for a kid learning centre half play as he went along and his continued presence at the core of the defence served as a lightning rod around which the criticisms of the McCarthy regime crackled. Harte never suffered a full-blown disaster while at the centre of things though and the experience was merely processed as part of the programme for his own development.

A few years on, Harte is fresh-faced and full of running, the only signs remaining of a youth which has yielded him a regular job at the top of the Premiership. He is part of a wave of Leeds players who have transformed the Elland Road club's prospects.

At the start of the season there were many who felt that Harte's young Leeds colleagues would give Manchester United a good run for their money this year. Not to be, however.

"We got so many injuries at the start it put a dampener on it but we felt that way before the season started that we could give them a challenge. It was too late before we got our game together but the season has turned out well enough anyway."

Leeds' unlikely adventure through the Champions League and their belated challenge for the third-placed spot in the Premiership has been played out against the backdrop of the sensationally unfolding court case involving Harte's Leeds team-mates.

Not suprisingly he is reticent about it all, saying simply that it's happening away from the team and he just hopes it works out for the best for the players involved. It hasn't been too hard, he says, to maintain a professional focus.

Anyway he's had his own football troubles this season and the efficiency with which he tended to them has been a further testament to his own character. Dropped, having established himself seemingly permanently in the Leeds team, he went back and made himself a better player.

"I was fed up to be dropped but I knew I was a bit off myself. I wasn't playing well for the club and I missed eight or nine games in all, sitting on the bench. It's a wake-up call. It was nice to get involved again after that, it makes you appreciate it and it gives you some edge back. It's down to confidence, if you aren't passing well or not defending well you don't expect to keep getting picked. I didn't feel I was doing as well as I should. It makes you fight that bit harder. I started to do extra laps and extra work in the weights room.

You can't let your head drop or your game will get worse so you just stay back after training and work harder."

"If I had continued playing I would have got worse probably. The manager made the right decision. I was disappointed. There'd be something wrong if I wasn't. Now I've found my form and I'm scoring a few goals."

That's how Harte has always responded to competition. When he was younger and George Graham was in charge he picked up his newspaper one summer morning and read that Graham had bought himself a new full back in Danny Granville. He knew that managers always feel obliged towards players who arrive with a price tag trailing behind them.

So . . ."I saw Danny was coming in and I spent most of the summer on Bettystown beach, running and getting fitter than I had been."

He lost over half a stone and began a routine of conditioning that has served him well. When he arrived back at Elland Road to battle for his place his sheer grit impressed many.

"I like competition" he says now. "Dominic Matteo and myself are in competition now and you need that. If you aren't playing well you shouldn't be in, so you grit your teeth and go out and prove to the manager that you are good enough. Extra training, running in the gym. Not just having a shower and going home."

It's that perception which has made Harte such a quiet phenomemon. In a game where brilliant youngsters fail in their droves every season he is one of those who has brought maturity and character to the party as well. It has made the difference. There has always been more to Ian Harte than met the eye.

"I came over to Leeds first in 1993. The first month I was really looking forward to everything and I didn't miss being at home too much." Luckily he had his uncle to talk to.

Harte probably has the best part of a decade left with which to define his career but the chance's are that he'll always crop up in trivia questions handcuffed to one of the least avuncular men in football. Gary Kelly. The Uncle. The popular image of the two is as virtual siamese twins. In fact, they are strikingly different individuals who had little contact with each other as they grew up.

"I can remember we went on holidays once. We went with Gary's mam and all the family and my mam and dad to Spain. I was quite young and Gary seemed much older. We didn't see each other every week around Drogheda, though, and then he went away to Leeds and I'd just be watching him on telly. It was amazing for me, watching someone I was related to. Then I got my chance."

Gary Kelly had been famously homesick when he arrived at Leeds and was tempted several times to just break for home. When Ian Harte had trouble settling, he didn't go through the horrors, he took a shortcut.

"I got quite homesick and, as I was living in digs near to where Gary was, I just asked the club to be put in the same house as Gary. I'd just turned 16 so it was quite tough but there's others have had it worse and that was a great help.

"After that I suppose I missed family and friends. It was summer when I went over and I'd keep wondering about what I was missing out on at home. I've missed eight years of my youth for football but I'm glad I made the decision. If I had gone home, I don't know what I would be doing now. I don't know what would be there for me in Drogheda."

But that's the past, a different country. Today he gets down to the task of enhancing what has already been a distinguished international career. In 1994 when he was still in his tenderness at Leeds, Ian Harte's parents travelled to America to see Uncle Gary play in the World Cup. A trip to Japan and South Korea might be twice as fruitful for them next year.

"These are the games we have to win if we are going anywhere. We have the players now and, in fairness, the preparation has been good. We all feel for Mick and what he has gone through but he has been amazing, I don't know how he has done it but he has kept the focus on the match."

In the dressingroom this evening, Harte's voice will be one of those less heard. He has so much packed into 23 years already that he resists the idea of wishing his life away.

"I'd still like to see myself as one of the young lads. Gary and Keano and those guys are the senior players. I would still like to have a laugh with the boys for a few years yet."