Missing out on the chance to play European Cup football at Celtic Park might be enough to break the hearts of most of the National League's teenagers, but as he celebrated his 19th birthday with the rest of the Irish Youths squad in Ayia Napa yesterday, Keith Doyle was finding it hard enough to complain.

"It would have been great," said the quietly spoken Dubliner as he relaxed at the team hotel yesterday morning, "but then to play for your country against England is an opportunity you couldn't give up, it might never happen in your life again so you've got to make the most of it." And that's just what the St Patrick's Athletic full-back intends to do. Having only graduated to senior football a year ago, and nailed down his first place at club level shortly before Christmas, Doyle, who has just completed the first of a three-year accountancy and finance course at Dublin City University, is still anxious to make the most of his opportunities and learn enough over the next season or two to equip him for a career at the highest level in England. Being the only Irish player based at home scarcely fazes him, though the others, he says, "have made him feel very much at home". The fact that he turned down the offer of a contract at Millwall in favour of something most of them crave - first-team football - sort of evens up the score a little.

Still, he admits, he would love to make a go of it in England "at some stage over the next few years and picking up a European championship medal here this week would go very nicely next to the National League winners medal he earned last season. After Sunday's game against Croatia talk of further success for an Irish underage team, however tentative, was unavoidable, but yesterday Doyle preferred merely to reflect on what had been a remarkable first outing. "I think it was a very good performance all round and I don't think many people could have expected an Irish team to score five goals in a European championship finals match at any level," he says.

At the back, it's generally conceded within the camp, things didn't go quite so smoothly, especially in the first half when, as Brian Kerr put it, there was a bit of a Sisters of Charity act going on. The problems were largely confined to the centre, although Doyle found himself with quite a handful to contend with in the form of Croatia's talented runner out on the right, Mihael Mikic. For most of the half hour leading up to half-time Mikic gave Doyle a rough time, repeatedly running at him before cutting inside to get in behind his own strikers. The tactic was at the core of one of Croatia's best spells of the game and it was Doyle's improved ability to cope with it after a chat with Kerr and Noel O'Reilly at half-time that was as central to his side's renewed superiority in the second period. It's the sort of lesson that will go a long way to repay his Dublin club for his loss to them tomorrow night in Glasgow.

Mikic, though, wasn't the only one causing full-backs problems with his runs from wide positions. For the Irish, Liverpool's "Young Player of the Year" Richie Partridge was having a field day on both flanks, starting on the left, from where he set up the second goal of the night for Robbie Keane, but merrily switching from one to the other over the course of the 80 minutes he played. Partridge established himself in the Anfield reserves last season and aims to at least start being talked about in connection with the first team by the end of next week. He went on to score a fine goal in the second half on Sunday and, given the occasion, he felt it was his best performance in an Irish jersey so far. His showing on Sunday was all the more remarkable given that, having been elbowed by his marker early on, he played for most of the game with a cut inside his mouth that had been caused by a tooth digging into the inside of his lip.

Afterwards the injury required a stitch, but team doctor Ronan O'Gallagher helped to keep him involved in the game by placing a supply of cotton wool inside his sock and, at intervals, the little 17year-old could be spotted, like some amateur flyweight up at the Stadium, removing a bloodstained bundle from his mouth before heading off to do battle again. That sort of determination is likely to keep him in the side that Kerr selects to play England tonight, a game which Partridge describes as a semi-final for both teams involved, and the teenager from Blanchardstown makes no bones about how important it is to him to get out on the pitch with the green jersey on. "From the time of the Italian World Cup all of the Irish players were heroes to me, they were like gods. I know how lucky I am to be at Liverpool because a lot of people would give their right arms to be in my position, but this is incredible. When I was watching Irish games it was my dream to be like the players out there, now that dream's becoming a little bit of a reality."