Donal Keogan is an optimist by nature, which helps when you’re facing the long odds he does every day.
Bookies have slapped a 16/1 price on the joint Meath captain getting his hands on the Delaney Cup after Sunday’s Leinster final against Dublin.
But the battle we should all be hoping the PhD graduate wins is in his day job as a Process Analytical Scientist.
Keogan spends his time attempting to develop ground-breaking treatments to kill off bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics and threaten us all.
Defender Keogan said: “It’s kind of scary the figures that are being thrown out there, in terms of the percentage of the bacteria that are resistant to antibiotic X or Y. It’s getting harder and harder to kill these bacteria.
“So you need new antibiotics to combat the resistance and that’s what we’re working on.”
Beating Dublin in a mere football match shouldn’t be nearly as tricky – yet while Keogan laughs at the comparison, he admits there’s a new confidence in the Meath ranks after a positive season so far.
They’ve won nine of their 11 League and Championship games and need just one more win, on Sunday or in a Round 4 qualifier, to reach the Super 8s.
A vital part of Meath’s rise has been the recruitment of coach Colm Nally, and Keogan said: “He’s been a breath of fresh air in terms of his coaching and his training, that’s definitely one element of it.
"The confidence we gained from the League and winning games was great too and you do take encouragement from that. It’s just confidence, belief in the set-up and the gameplan and each other.
“Performances have reflected that belief.
“The ones that stand out to me are Armagh and Kildare, where our backs were against the wall and I think Armagh had got eight or nine scores in a row. In another year we might have crumbled.”
Keogan wasn’t around in 2010 when Meath put five goals past Pat Gilroy’s Dubs, so he has never experienced a League or Championship win over the neighbours.
But he has a strong sense of how it might feel, having gorged himself on footage of the Meath v Dublin four-in-a-row games of 1991 as a kid.
He said: “I remember one summer I used to watch them over and over again. Four great games.”
He’s careful not to predict a repeat win but is confident of a strong showing.
“We have helped ourselves in terms of being more consistent, that was one of our main pitfalls in the last couple of years, our inconsistency, and we really tried to hone in on that and bring a new level of consistency to each game.”
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