Keith Duggan talks to Portadown's Dublin-born striker Vinny Arkins, a player who has always thrived on being under estimated

Vinny Arkins has the flu. It is nothing dramatic, hardly preventing him from training or scoring goals for Portadown.

But as he sits sipping diet cola in a hotel in Dublin airport, he is bemoaning the fact he can't shake it off. It's not like a central defender, there is no giving it the slip or even a crafty elbow to the ribs. It has become his constant, sneaky companion for the past month and he will have to battle through it. He has decided ignoring it is the best policy. No mollycoddling. The thing is stubborn.

Arkins shrugs. He knows stubborn. Close on 20 years as a working footballer means that stubbornness has carried him along during the times when his athletic attributes, his worth as a footballer, were called into question.

It serves him well today, as the established goal threat for Portadown, a no-nonsense centre forward with bruising elbows and a delicate touch in front of the posts, a southerner whose 36 goals saved the club from relegation four years ago. Records like that tend to overshadow matters of religion and geography.

The fans accepted him from day one. Now 34 years of age, the top scorer in the Irish league in six out of the last eight years, he would be happy to finish his career in a Northern Irish trouble spot that is as close as he has come to having a football home.

ARKINS HAS LEFT a mark on many football cities. When he talks about his football life, the astonishing thing is that his experiences are like a portal to a game and culture that does not exist any more, when soccer on both sides of the Irish sea was trenchantly working class and no-frills.

Sometimes you hear that sense of suspicious disbelief in old-school internationals like Niall Quinn who were reared in the Victorian practices of the old first division and have never come to fully trust or accept the new laws of easy money and player as king.

Arkins's sporting life ran in parallel line to big Niall's. He was a Dublin child of the 1970s who decided he wanted to make a soccer life for himself in the mid-1980s, the Ireland of Self-Aid and Gay Byrne. All the right moves - a gilded adolescence kicking ball with Stella Maris, with Home Farm and with underage international sides attracted the scouts and with Newcastle, Aberdeen and Dundee United whispering sweet nothings, he opted for Dundee.

"In fairness, we had a terrible life there," Arkins says, smiling now. "It was an absolute boot camp. Jim McLean ruled through pure fear. And it worked. I saw him having senior Scottish internationals practically in tears. It was terrifying."

Dundee were going places then. They beat Barcelona the previous season in both legs of the Uefa Cup semi-final and had a string of native players that recall an era when Scotland still glimmered with international respectability. Billy McKinlay was there and Maurice Malpas and David Narey and Kevin Gallacher. Arkins stayed in digs with Duncan Ferguson, then a big, friendly callow kid like himself. They both earned £45 a week, easily spent in a university town.

The club contributed £7 towards their accommodation, but the snag was they had to sign it weekly and it was contingent on their performance at training.

"Howdya think ye played this week, son?"

"Did all right, yeah. Happy enough."

"Nah, you were slackin' off, son. Try harder next week."

Arkins laughs. "The thing was, it was £7 to Dundee United but it was like £700 to us."

AS A GANGLY 17-year-old, he struggled through the first season, but found his range the next year, scoring 15 times as the youth team made it through to the Scottish Cup final. In between games, he was in charge of cleaning boots. All requests for new boots went through the manager's room and Arkins became accustomed to seasoned players asking him to put the finishing touches to a threadbare patch of leather.

Once, when Kevin Gallacher put in for new boots during a period when he had performed poorly, the manager turned him down. It was that kind of atmosphere. When McLean told Arkins he wanted him to come back for a pre-season trial before deciding on a third-year contract, the Dublin boy just nodded.

"Said nothing. I was in the players' pool and that was worth £100 a week. But I had no guarantees. So I said nothing and walked out and got me £100 all through the summer and went home to train with Shamrock Rovers. It was intimidating as a youngster speaking to a man like McLean then, but I think that was the moment I decided nobody was going to step on me."

And so began his tour.

Two great years with Shamrock Rovers led to a young-player-of-the-year award and an offer from Liam Brady to move to Celtic. He moved to Scotland, but not to the Bhoys: Celtic had to clear their books before they could complete the signing and, in the meantime, St Johnstone swooped and threw him straight into the first team.

Third game up was a visit to Ibrox. Even now, it is a blur. He knows they were singing about him and knows it wasn't pleasant, but he didn't care. Richard Gough marked him. St Johnstone lost 3-1, but Arkins scored. A few days after that, he took a phone call from Mel Stein, who was Paul Gascoigne's agent. Mel was interested and Arkins scored 13 goals in 23 games that season.

But it's funny how quickly things change. John McClelland took over and Arkins felt the big freeze, stuck in that nothing place between the hinterland of the first team and the reserves.

Ollie Byrne took him to Shelbourne and he moved gladly, British football a thing of the past at 22. Another glory run at Shels, with cup and league honours in the reckoning under the stewardship of Colin Murphy, saw him pack his bags again.

Murphy was appointed as manager of Notts County and wanted to take his big striker with him. One of the original league teams, Notts County had heritage and ambition and even though he hated leaving Dublin, it was a chance. In his first year he scored goals for fun, but the team struggled and Sam Allardyce took over from Murphy. Big Sam did not see Arkins in his plans.

"Years later, I heard from Dave Connell, who actually lives near me now, that Sam saw me playing for Shels one year. It was when Sam was with Limerick and he said to Dave as they watched me play, 'Don't fancy him much.' It was just one of those things. I was just out in the cold."

Notts County was strange. Steve Nicol, the totemic Liverpool player, was finishing out his career at the club. Arkins never told him he used to stick Shoot posters of him on the wall as a child. He played in Wembley in the league play-offs and ended up playing corner back at Elland Road, marking Gary Speed in the League Cup. He lived for a time with Graeme Hogg, the ex-Manchester United defender also out of favour with big Sam.

Arkins always recalls one maudlin morning at the training ground when he whiled away the time with Hogg and Nigel Jameson chipping balls into the goal with a local lad between the posts. The team trained on a nearby pitch. Mentally, Arkins had already cleared out of Notts County and when Ronnie McFall from Portadown called, he did not hesitate.

County paid £150,000 for their Irish striker and took £10,000 from Portadown in 1997. Funny, when he left Dundee as a kid, Jim McLean forced a £12,000 release fee from Noel King before he could play with Shamrock Rovers. His value had crashed like some stock exchange casualty. Within two years, when he had established himself as a week-in, week-out fundamental scorer of goals in the Irish League, Linfield and Glentoran and other clubs tried to entice him, offering Portadown 40 or 50 grand.

Arkins found it all amusing. It wasn't as if he had just started scoring goals. Even as a child, he knew where the net was and it didn't matter if he played in front of 40 people or 40,000, he always fancied himself to stick one away.

AS A TWO-TIME player of the year, he has a reputation in Ulster that is assured. Portadownsuits him and he must be alone among Southerners in speaking of a place that is normally the source of bad stories with something close to affection.

"From the start, the Portadown supporters were great, they really were. I didn't know what to expect. When you go to other grounds, you get the usual bit of sectarian stuff, but it never bothered me. Like, even at Cliftonville, they couldn't call me a Fenian so they called me a Free State f***er. All I could think was that there was nothing for free where I came from.

"But the thing with Portadown is it has opened up in recent years. I think people realise there is more to life than hating each other. Like, I do know that if you were looking for trouble, you wouldn't have to walk very far to find it. But it's fine."

For the nuances, the beliefs, the concerns and the prejudices mean nothing to him. He doesn't care if a well-taken corner is delivered by a Catholic or Protestant boot.

Anyway, after Portadown won the league two years ago, they toured the bars of both communities. Charlie McKeever's is a regular stop and they ended up in there with the cup drinking among an Apprentice Boys' band who had worked up a thirst practising for the marching season. They talked football more than the Battle of the Boyne and got on fine.

When it comes to the North, Vinnie tends to go with the famous explanation given by a Belfast citizen to a BBC reporter: "They say it's not as bad as they say it is."

Once, a crank call meant he and a few southerner team-mates were driven to a Linfield game in an armour-plated car having been warned not to show up. And he was nervous, but the game passed without incident - other than Arkins scoring.

And two seasons ago, there was some trouble after a heavy cup loss to Glentoran. But there has been nothing to make him feel uneasy or to question his place with Portadown. The Ulster town and club have been faithful to him and that means a lot.

The Setanta Cup will bring it all full circle for Vinny Arkins, coming up against Cork City and dear old Shelbourne in the prestige competition. He grins as he talks about "the clubs down south" in an unadulterated Dublin accent.

"Maybe we are on a hiding to nothing because they are very strong. Still, we are mid-season and they might underestimate us so it's all up in the air."

Arkins has thrived on being underestimated. He roomed with a bunch of other hopefuls in a terraced house in Dundee nearly 20 years ago. He can remember the food and the patterned wallpaper and about half of their names and sometimes wonders what became of them. He has not seen Duncan Ferguson for many years but was always glad he made it to the bright lights of the Premiership. Other guys, he knows in his gut, faded out of the football life. Not Vinny Arkins. He toils on because he knows scoring goals is a gift he has.

In recent years, when he could do no wrong, Jackie Fullerton or the guys from television in Ulster would suggest a sit-down, but Arkins preferred to slink away after games, to keep his head down and keep doing his job.

The football world is choked with cautionary stories of burn-out and ruined potential and melancholy guys convinced they never got their break.

That is what makes Arkins's continuing presence such an indomitable and heartening tale. No complaints and no excuses, the good and the bad he has taken in his stride.

And it is not over yet. No, Saturday afternoons are still his stomping ground even if he never did get a new pair of boots out of Jim McLean.