For King and county

TWO days ago, Caoimhin King emptied his wardrobe and made his way across the city of London from Stratford to Liverpool Street Station, from where he caught the Stansted Express to the airport and a flight home.

The planes, trains and automobiles routine had been a weekly grind for the young Meath defender ever since he began his postgraduate teaching course in the University of East London back in October but, in the juggling act between football and college, there was no doubt which would be dropped first.

College could wait. Meath couldn’t. He’ll return to England in September for the final eight weeks that will earn him his qualification and his passport into the job market but he bats away the suggestion that he is somehow going beyond the call of duty by pressing pause on his studies.

“It is a serious effort but if you’re serious about football you won’t have any problem putting in the time or doing whatever is needed. There are times when you wonder is it all worth it, when you’re training in mid-winter in the freezing cold, but the pay off is playing championship football in front of 80,000 people.”

Part of his course involves teaching practice in the city’s east end, a cultural melting pot of schools where classrooms can boast up to 17 different nationalities. In those surroundings, King’s accent doesn’t draw much attention.

The kids ask him of Ireland, the adults too, but his attempts to explain Gaelic football – “I tell them it’s a cross between soccer and rugby” – draw nothing more than blank stares.

It’s different at home, especially with a replay against Dublin only three days away. Walking into one of his home town’s pubs amid the lunchtime rush, it’s a matter of seconds before the first handshake and query about Croke Park tomorrow.

Not everyone he meets has a Meath accent. Just a few miles down the N3 from the Dublin border, changing demographics have seen Dunshaughlin inundated with what, in times of war, would be called fifth columnists.

“I wouldn’t know any of the Dublin people myself but you see young lads walking around in Dublin jerseys every day. Dunshaughlin and Ratoath down the road have just exploded. There are housing states going up everywhere and lots of the people buying here are from Dublin. It’s good. A lot of them get involved in the underage teams here so they’re more than welcome.”

The Dublin influence was highlighted two years ago when Charlie Redmond spent a season over the seniors but it isn’t just the Dubs who have embellished the town’s football tapestry.

King himself can vouch for that. His dad Gabriel was on the Galway panel that lost two consecutive All-Ireland finals in the 70s and his mum Anita is a camogie player from Ballygalget in Down.

Another major influence on King and every other child to kick a football in the town was the principal of the local national school, Jim Gillian who, though originally from Mayo, bleeds the local black and amber. Gillian was, and is, a football obsessive and he ensured that any player with a hint of talent would progress through to the local underage club St Martin’s and beyond.

King’s teenage years were spent playing hurling and football for Drumree, Dunshaughlin and various Meath representative sides and he won a senior county football medal with Dunshaughlin when he was only 16. A year later he was named the county’s Young Player of the Year.

It was only a matter of time until he was drafted into the senior scene and, though hurling is his first love, football’s powers of seduction are stronger in Meath. His championship bow came against Dublin two years ago when he was told to pick up Collie Moran for the afternoon and, though Meath lost by two points, he kept his experienced opponent scoreless on the day.

“I was 19 at the time but I took myself by surprise by how I took it in my stride. It was only afterwards that it dawned on me how big a deal it was — your first championship match and it is against Dublin at a packed Croke Park.”

It’s a temperament that has served him well in the Meath defence. Two years on he has played under three different managers but King has been one constant through the turmoil, playing in every one of the county’s nine championship matches since his debut.

“I’m very laid back,” he explains. “I tend to take things in my stride. I’ve been playing football for years. My dad had me playing when I was five or six so I’ve no reason not to be confident with the ball. It’s just the same thing in a different surroundings. Same skills, same ball, you just do what you’ve always done.”

Meath’s stock hasn’t been as high as his own of late. Every one of his three years on the U21 panel were strangled at birth by Kildare but the hardest blows came in 2002 when the minors lost the Leinster final to Longford and the All-Ireland final to Derry.

Even now, King shakes his head when he thinks about that Derry defeat. Meath collapsed that day, perhaps overburdened by the hopes of a county that has had very little to shout about at any grade since the good times took their leave with the old millennium.

“Maybe there has been a lack of emphasis on the underage structures. I suppose, when Meath were winning people just took their eye off the ball. It’s inevitable. It happens in every county but the talent is definitely there.

“They won the Leinster minor last year and every minor team of the last five or six years has thrown up three or four new faces. St Pats of Navan is doing well in the colleges every year as well so there is a constant flow of new players. People have over-exaggerated the lack of talent in Meath.”

With Sean Boylan finally stepping down after quarter of a century as senior manager in 2005, Meath were always going to go through a period of transition but the poisonous atmosphere that pockmarked Eamon Barry’s year in charge last season didn’t help. King played under the Duleek man for Dunshaughlin and points out that things could have worked out very differently for Barry had they not let Laois wriggle off their hook in Navan last year.

Barry, he says, has and will be again a very successful manager but there is no disguising the fact that the waters in Meath have calmed with Colm Coyle’s decision to wear the Bainisteoir’s bib.

“The transition is over, no question,” says King. “The players are more familiar with each other. We’ve bonded more this year. We’ve played better for longer. Colm is great with players and he has good selectors in with him.

“You feel like there’s a plan in place and hopefully Colm will be here for a while and things can settle down again. We have to take it further now. We have to be looking to win Leinster.”

Beat Dublin tomorrow and the bad days will be well and truly over.