Free spirit Doherty shooting from the lip

Matt Doherty in full flight is a wonderful sight.

Not just on the pitch but off it where, unlike the vast majority of his colleagues in the modern game, he refuses to filter his thoughts. There is no mental brake when he speaks. No voice in his head telling him to toe the party line.

It’s less than six months since he gave an interview claiming that his ‘face didn’t fit’ in Martin O’Neill’s Ireland setup and he was heavily critical of the regime’s “bizarre” and “old-school” methods when he spoke on national radio the same day O’Neill and Keane stepped down.

It’s a view he isn’t going to disown now.

“The only thing I might regret is the timing of it. It was a bit soon. I’ve gone onto that radio station before but I had cancelled on them a few weeks before so, when they asked this time around, I thought, ‘oh I don’t want to cancel on them again’. So I went on it ... What did I even say?”

That he can’t quite recall is astonishing in itself and there were further criticisms of O’Neill’s Ireland tenure yesterday, though more indirect this time, when he gushed over the upturn in the mood this week on Mick McCarthy’s watch.

The atmosphere is definitely different, not just around the players but around the whole place. Everyone seems to be just a bit happier, enjoying it more. Training is a bit more fun. So, yeah, the place is definitely different and it is a better atmosphere.

You wonder where he got this streak. It wasn’t from his family. His dad Tony has told him more than once that it would be better to keep schtum than lay bare his true thoughts. He can see the sense in that but instinct invariably wins out.

“I just don’t know if I can stop myself from saying it,” he said yesterday ahead of training at Abbotstown. “I think in my head, ‘Don’t say it’, but it just comes out anyway. But that’s why I’m here. I’m here to answer questions that you ask me.

“If you ask me a question ... I’m not a liar so I’m not going to try and get out of the question. Just answer it.

"The answers I give, they shouldn’t cause too much trouble unless people take them the wrong way.”

The only time he swerved a question here was when asked to confirm or deny the rumour that O’Neill rang him up after that radio interview to give him the proverbial earful. McCarthy is unlikely to be scrambling for a similar conversation.

Doherty spoke last week of a ‘tension’ that existed at Irish training sessions under O’Neill. The mood now is one of levity and hope as they go about trying to impress a man who took a shine to the 27-year-old when he signed him for Wolves from Bohemians nine years ago.

And McCarthy is no distant despot. Though he turned 60 last month, the former Ireland captain isn’t against partaking in some of the banter with his players and he has done it in a way which appears to have been natural rather than enforced.

That rapport extends to more than just a skit and a joke. McCarthy is another straight-talker but Doherty compares him favourably to his boss at Wolves, Nuno Espirito Santo, in terms of his ability to man-manage a squad and generate a happy dressing-room.

“He is a very good man-manager, first. From my time at Wolves, he nurtured me and took care of me when I was in a couple of sticky situations.

“Him and TC [Terry Connor] do a lot of the coaching on the pitch, and even in the little bits of training so far he knows exactly what he wants us to do. We haven’t done huge shape sessions, but he’ll stop [sessions] with a couple of pointers here or there.

“The next couple of days we’ll learn more of an idea of what he wants, but the main thing I’d say is he’s a great man-manager.

He wants to get involved with the banter between the lads, and he’s quite funny at times. None of that has changed, he hasn’t lost any of his sense of humour. He is always looking to be involved in some way.

“Some players need a different type of love from a manager,” he added.

Any affection would be an improvement for him in an Irish context given O’Neill played him just five times despite a glorious run of form with Wolves through a Championship campaign that ended in promotion and a new season in which he lit up the Premier League.

Doherty has described his confidence levels as “sky-high” on the back of a run of form that is highlighted by his six goals and seven assists from right wing-back with a Wolves side that sits seventh in the table and has an FA Cup semi-final against Watford to come.

The Dubliner’s shoot-from-the-lip approach doesn’t veer off target when talk turns to himself. He knows exactly how many goals and assists he has this season — six and seven respectively — and there were never any doubts about his ability to thrive and not just survive at that level.

It seems bizarre that there’s a debate about whether he should be on the team but Doherty himself is adamant that he’d be comfortable at right midfield as well as right back and that he could establish a working relationship with Seamus Coleman down that touchline.

“Yeah, of course,” he explained.

“If it was anyone and you hadn’t played together before, you’d have to work on strengths and weaknesses of each other and how you like to play the game. I think we’re pretty similar.

“Our games involve little one-twos, clever play, not always just running past people down the line.

"That’s not always the case. We see each other as a bit smarter, that’s how we like to play the game. If that’s the case then it should work on Saturday.”