INTERVIEW KEITH FAHEY: Emmet Malonetalks to Republic of Ireland international Keith Fahey, who is determined to make the most of his second coming

HAVING SEEN football thrust both fame and fortune on many of those who were considered fellow prospects when he was coming through the ranks of Dublin’s schoolboy football scene, Keith Fahey was revelling in his new-found status as a hero of the international game yesterday.

The 27-year-old has known more than his share of ups and down during the course of a sometimes turbulent professional career and admits to having considered abandoning the professional game as financial problems at St Patrick’s Athletic threatened his livelihood just a couple of years ago.

With the encouragement of his late father, Declan, however, Fahey carved out a place for himself in the English top flight with Birmingham City and is now living with the minor inconveniences that come with scoring an important goal on your competitive international debut – which mainly centre on mobile phones and framed shirts.

“Yeah, I must have got about a hundred texts,” he says of his communications overload. “Everybody’s been on, even people who I haven’t spoken to in a couple of years.

“I answered a few of them but you can’t get around to answering them all, you’d be at it all day.”

As for the shirt, he reveals, he has only recently put the one he wore against Argentina up on the wall back at home. Now, it seems, “we might have to jig things around and move that one”.

Needless to say, he doesn’t come across as being too put out by it all.

He has, he admits, taken a few quiet moments to have a word with his dad who, he believes, still follows his progress as proudly as ever since passing away a year ago.

And there was a welcome opportunity to see other members of his family over the weekend when his cousin, Monique, was married just outside Dublin.

“We had a couple of hours off and I just called in for a half-hour,” he says. “I didn’t want to be turning up when they had just started their dinner so we rigged it so I could just nip in in-between courses.

“I got a great round of applause and she was delighted, and it was great to be able to congratulate them. My dad’s brothers were delighted too.”

On the face of it, Fahey was an unlikely enough hero in Yerevan and admits that even after coming on, getting on the score-sheet wasn’t necessarily uppermost in his mind.

Trapattoni, he says, had told him to concentrate on looking to get on to the end of anything that ran loose from the strikers rather than looking to make any sort of impact out wide and the Italian is unlikely to forget the success with which his orders were implemented.

Despite the strike, he seems unlikely to be promoted to the starting line-up for tomorrow night’s game against Andorra although the Dubliner has learned at this stage in his career not to rule anything out.

“I’m in the squad and I’d like to think I’ve as good a chance as anyone to play,” he says. “When you’re in the squad you want to play, but I’m happy to be in the squad and I’m sure the manager will pick the best team.”

As he speaks there is a clear sense of the quiet determination that has helped him to turn things around over the last few years but it wasn’t always that way.

Fahey admits to having been unhappy when he went to Arsenal as a teenager and while Liam Brady rated the midfielder highly, he simply couldn’t settle into the life of a professional footballer. An unsuccessful spell at Aston Villa followed before he decided to return to Dublin.

Back at home, he was regarded by some as being a little difficult but his talent was never seriously in doubt and during a second spell at St Patrick’s Athletic, it seemed, he resolved to make the most of his talents in what was essentially a renewed assault on the big time.

“I think I had a good couple of years with Pat’s before I went away (again). That made me realise I wanted to get back and see if I could play at the top level. I’m determined to keep going now. I don’t want to just sit on it.

“When I was younger I didn’t really see the bigger picture, I didn’t see how good things could be. And I didn’t enjoy being away and I didn’t enjoy the seriousness. But then later, I saw a few players go away and that kind of hurt me a bit. I thought, ‘I’m a better player than them.’”

He quietly resolved to step things up over the course of that season at Richmond Park so as to catch the eye of potential employers back in England and within the year he had arrived at St Andrews.

On Friday night, he took another small step towards establishing once and for all just how good he is. Perhaps more importantly, though, he showed that having spurned earlier chances to take his place at the game’s top table, he is hungry now to grab every opportunity that comes his way.