reference textfield on timeline

[nielzzz]

In de Flash IDE I create this movieclip 'MC1' and assign class MC1.as to it.

On the timeline, I add a textfield 'TF1'.

Now, in MC1.as I can change the textfield easily: TF1.text = 'text here'.

This works perfectly and I should not complain... however;

Is there a way I can tell my class MC1.as that there is a TF1 that is a textfield? So I can use codehinting?

If I add

 var TF1:TextField;

the reference to the textfield is lost and now NULL. So that does not work.