YOU'VE hardly said hello to Tony Sheridan, the newly crowned National League player of the year, when he makes it clear what's on his mind. "I'm happy to be playing with Shelbourne, but I'd prefer to be over in England.

"I messed up at Coventry, but I just want to get back over again as soon as possible. That's why I'm trying even harder now, because I know in my heart and soul that that's the place I should be."

And that's the recurring theme of the conversation. Sheridan, who turned 22 last month, wants a second chance on a bigger stage because he believes he's good enough to take it, knows he's grown up enough to make the most of it. Some would say he had his chance and blew it, but maybe they're going by a one paragraph summary of Sheridan's English football adventure.

Signed by Coventry City when he was 16. Made the first team under Bobby Gould two years later. The new Liam Brady, the world at his feet and all that. Exit Gould, enter Phil Neal. Tony who? Exit Neal, enter Ron Atkinson. Still Tony who? A few pints and a few late nights too many. You're on your way son. Back to Dublin. Nice and simple, Tony blew it.

Fill in the gaps in the story though, through Sheridan's account of a Dublin teenager's life at an English football club, and you wonder how any kid makes it there at all. Not that he's making excuses for "messing up", he's his own harshest critic, but his experience at Coventry didn't quite live up to the expectations of the boy from Crumlin who decided at seven that football would be his life.

If he'd followed in his father's sporting footsteps Gaelic football might have been his life. Tony Senior, a native of Cavan, was a GAA man to the core, but even when Tony Junior lined out for the Gaelic football team in school old habits, learnt young, died hard. "Even when I was playing Gaelic I was really playing soccer - I'd only pick the ball up if I had to." No contest then, soccer was the game.

He wasn't the only one who believed then that he could turn his football talent into a career. "People around the area used to say that I was going to be a great player and that gave me a lot of confidence, cos I do like a little bit of praise. My dream then was to make a lot of money for my Ma so I could look after her, and it still is, it's, still something that I want to do."

BY THE time he was an Irish Under 15 international his teacher pulled him aside and told him to concentrate on his football. After leaving school he did the FAI FAS course in Palmerstown, where Roy Keane, three years his senior, was also learning his trade. Trials at Brighton, Leeds and Gillingham, where Sheridan's current manager Damien Richardson was in charge, followed, but it was Coventry, then managed by Terry Butcher, who finally signed the 16 year old.

He was reluctant to leave home so young, and after only four months he had enough of the daily routine of a young professional footballer. The day's training was over by lunch, and then there were hours and hours of free time to fill. In the lodge that became their home, while most of the young players filled their day by playing endlessly with their Segas and Nintendos, Sheridan tried to fill his days with sleep. "It was the only thing to do."

He walked out on Coventry and came home because he "missed the things that I was used to, being around my mates and my family, people that you could talk to". Nine months later Bobby Gould, the new Coventry manager, rang his house and told him he was one of the best young players he had seen in five or six years. That wash what Sheridan needed to hear and he packed his bags to return to Coventry.

The homesickness was still there when he returned, but he soon discovered he wasn't the only one feeling lonely. "Coventry was full of Irish players - if I had any problems, if I was homesick or anything like that, I would talk to them and they would tell me `you're alright, everything's grand'. It was nice. I don't think at any other club you would be able to talk to fellas about how you feel, about home - but over there it was different, all the lads felt like that themselves."

Under the guidance of Gould, Sheridan began to make rapid progress as a player, and the manager had enough faith in the teenager's abilities to throw him into first team football. "Bobby Gould was an honest person, a person who would give everyone a chance. He gave me a chance and I took it. He picked me for the first team, rested me and picked me again, like what Alex Ferguson did with Ryan Giggs."

October 23rd, 1993, the day of Gould's departure from Highfield Road, is the day it all began to go wrong. Gould resigned because the chairman wouldn't give him money to spend his successor, Phil Neal, didn't include Sheridan in his plans. "It was frustrating because I was getting places as a footballer. But then Neal took over and that was it really.

"It took me six, seven months to realise that and I knew then that I wasn't wanted. He never said anything to me, he never explained that I wasn't wanted, so I just let it go on and on and on and then I messed up. I did things shouldn't have done, drinking and stuff, a few mad nights.

"Part of it was just being a young fella away from home, plus sometimes you got so bored you thought that drinking and having late nights was the way out. You'd go home to bed, you'd have a few drinks on you and you wouldn't remember anything, you just wanted to forget about home and all that.

"Part of it was frustration and - excuse the language - part of it was `fuck him, fuck him, what does he know'. At the time I thought I knew, better, but I know now I shouldn't have done that stuff. I should have just got on with it. But I did try my hardest for seven or eight months, but after that I just didn't care, I just didn't care."

ANOTHER new season, another new Coventry manager, Sheridan's fourth in as many years. This time, in February 1995, the new man was Ron Atkinson, but Sheridan only lasted the first two months of his reign. Atkinson was given big bucks to spend and was in a hurry to spend them, there was no time to wait for Sheridan's talents to flower. He was on his way, back to Dublin.

Damien Richardson gave him a fresh start at Shelbourne in August 1995, and in the 14 months since his debut for the club he has more than justified his manager's decision to sign him. He loves the club and its supporters, has a huge amount of respect for Richardson, but desperately wants a bigger challenge and that bigger stage.

"I am frustrated at the moment, but it's just something that I have to deal with. I think if it was any player in the League of Ireland who kept hearing people say `you shouldn't be here, you should be in England' they would get frustrated. But I'm not going to let it get on me or anything, I'm not going to say that I'm never going to get back to England because I know in my heart and my soul that I will. It's just time, you need time before it happens.

"I hope people see that I've grown up since Coventry, I really hope they do," he adds, insisting that he's a changed person since he returned home. He sounds like a man who has done more than a little soul searching recently. "I have indeed," he says. In the last year? "Six months," he says with certainty. Why, what happened six months ago? He smiles but says nothing, and you wonder why he's staring dreamily at the far wall. His mate Steo Russell reveals all. "He met the love of his life." The pair burst out laughing before Sheridan puts a name to `the love of his life'.

"I met this girl from Kimmage, Dolores, when she was home on holidays from London where she worked. Even though she didn't want to move home, she did, she gave up everything. She had an ambition in life and in a way she made me realise that I had an ambition too, that I could be something that I always wanted to be as a kid. My Ma tried it, my Da tried it, but she was the one who finally made me realise that that's what I wanted, to go back to England.

"It did matter to me before, but it matters more now than last year. It's very hard to explain how a person that you didn't really know can just change you, to make you feel differently than the way you felt before. I just said to her give me three months and I'll be back over in England too. The plan was that we'd both go back when we got a club, but so far it's not happening, is it?"

It looked like it might happen two months ago when Graeme Souness invited Sheridan to Southampton for a two week trial. The club treated him, well, flew him executive class even if that gave him an uncomfortable trip home from Heathrow. "I had to sit in beside two businessmen in suits and I was there in my tracksuit - they must have thought I was a drug dealer," he says.

He liked Souness, liked his girlfriend even more (who, he reveals is, a cousin of Dickie Rock - bizarre). The pair met him at the airport on his arrival, took him to dinner and brought him back to their house - "10 bedrooms, it was like Dallas". When they were out for dinner Souness asked Sheridan if he'd have a pint. "I thought I better say no because I do worry about my reputation. He just laughed and said `it's not a test', he just wanted me to have a pint so it would be cosy.

The trial went well and Souness said he'd keep in touch. "I think he's still looking at me - well, I hope he's still looking at me. But Southampton was a start, I must have something if a Premiership club is looking at me."

Sheridan has something alright, now all he needs is a second chance to prove it. "I'd grab it with both hands. No more mess ups, definitely."