He's pressed for time as we speak. Nothing impolite but, getting a little restless, he switches on the television. There's only a few minutes to go before Liverpool's first semi-final of the week kicks off at the Nou Camp and it's not hard to tell that Paul McCarthy is keen to settle down and take another look at what he and his Wycombe team-mates are going to have to cope with tomorrow in the FA Cup semi-final at Villa Park.

Not that the 29-year-old Corkman, a central defender with the second division club for nearly five years, is on the look out for clues as to how he might deal with the challenge of marking Michael Owen, Robbie Fowler or Emile Heskey. He knows all about them, watches them all the time. "Yeah," he admits with a slight hint of embarrassment, "I've been a Liverpool fan since I was a kid."

Back then he dreamed that one day he might play for the club and for a while the notion didn't seem all that far fetched. A member of the Rockmount team that included Roy Keane and completely dominated underage football in Cork for a sizeable chunk of the 1980s, he became a regular for the Irish youth sides.

Brighton, then a decent-sized club in the old second division with a habit of signing youngsters who played underage international football, snapped him up along with Derek McGrath, Greg O'Dowd and Brian McKenna. After moving to England's south coast he made solid progress and went on to play in a European Championships, a Youth World Cup and made 10 under-21 appearances for his country.

He broke into the first team a couple of years after arriving and the first season he was in the side the club made the play-offs, eventually losing out on a place in the top flight at Wembley. Sadly the club then went into freefall, getting relegated the following year and undergoing a series of financial traumas as the club's owners attempted to stem huge losses and, ultimately, get out.

Liam Brady succeeded Barry Lloyd as manager but, says McCarthy "he got absolutely no support from the people who owned the club. I felt very sorry for him because he was, is, a very nice man and I think he could have done a really good job there but the situation was terrible, it wasn't unusual at all for him to end up paying for things around the club out of his own pocket."

Brady departed and when McCarthy's contract expired in the summer of 1996, after playing more than 200 games for the club, he decided enough was enough.

When Wycombe came in for him the then manager, Alan Smith, didn't have to do too much selling of the club to the Irishman, the promise of a wage packet that could be relied on each week and the prospect of a manageable 70mile drive to work each day pretty much did the trick. A tribunal decided the £100,000 fee and by mid summer the deal was done.

Since then life at the club has generally been good for him. An ankle injury meant a couple of lengthy spells on the sidelines last season but, he says: "I still played more than 30 games and this year it'll be more than 60."

Current manager Lawrie Sanchez has clearly provided inspiration and confidence, persuading players who had good reason to doubt his word that they could beat Leicester at Filbert Street when most saw the tie as no more than a fitting reward for defeats of first division outfits Grimsby, Wolves and Wimbledon.

"I couldn't see how we were going to get anything out of it," remarks McCarthy with a still slightly bemused tone, "but to be fair, the boss said he'd be very disappointed if we didn't get a result. In fact, he was cocksure that we could beat them."

The cup run should net the club more than a £1 million, enormous money to a small club. But it has taken its toll on the team's league campaign with any hopes of making the play-offs now a distant memory. That has proven a little costly for the club's players who had skewed their potential bonuses towards the league competition.

Tomorrow's match will be worth just a few hundred pounds each to the underdogs and even if they were to produce a miracle and actually win the FA Cup they would be entitled to no more than £1,000 per man.

"It was the right thing to do at the time," he says. "Nobody could have foreseen the cup run, it's come completely out of the blue and anyway, anyone would play in a game like this for free. It's a dream come through for me, I'll probably never get the chance again so the money doesn't even come into it."

Still, the club hasn't been tightfisted about the preparations. The squad spent most of this week at a golf resort in La Manga after which Sanchez moved on to Barcelona for a last look at tomorrow's opposition in action.

"We haven't even talked about them, to be honest, but basically we have to hope that the Barcelona game has taken a lot out of them. If they play to their capabilities then obviously we're going to be in trouble so the hope is that we'll do okay and they'll have an off day. Villa are playing on the pitch the day before so with a bit of luck that will help a bit too."

If not, then there will still be some small consolation for one member of the Wanderers side as they return south tomorrow evening. "Well, yeah," he laughs, "at least I'd get to cheer them on in the final."