He had to.

Bernard Flynn watched him in Navan last Sunday kick two points with his left boot out by the left touchline that were "as good as any two points you saw in Croke Park last summer". Meath, Flynn reckons, might now be without leaders in the mould of O'Rourke, McDermott or Fay but in Daithi Regan, they have a corner-forward in keeping with the tradition and quality of the glory years, the kind of player if Dublin had that would see football's Big Three become a Big Four.

Yet the last time Meath played the Dubs, Regan didn't start. That call of Sean Boylan's nearly broke Regan's heart. Then in the same game Regan nearly broke his back.

That injury kept him out of his work as an electrician for 16 weeks. In a way though, Boylan's decision hurt moref Rewind to that first week of last June. A Sunday newspaper (though not this one) decides that for their coverage of Dublin-Meath, Daithi Regan is the story; though he was only called up to the panel when he was 25, in just seven championship games, he's scored 3-30, 3-13 from play. Any time he's played more than 15 minutes in the league, he's always scored at least a point from play. Regan confides to the paper he's not 100 per cent certain if he'll start. He was only picked to start in one of the first three league games but then came on against Wicklow and kicked three points in 20 minutes. He then scored the same from play in local derbies against Louth and Cavan but was taken off in both the league semi-final and final.

The selectors have hardly said a word to him in training this past month. But look, he'll do the interview. Sure he still scored two points from play in each of those last two league games. In Meath's previous championship game, against Fermanagh, he scored 2-6; only one other Meath forward scored from play. He has to start, right?

The article never appeared. And prior to that game, Daithi Regan had never confronted the Meath management either. Even when they originally dropped him after his three points from play against Louth, he just sucked it up and tormented Cavan when Ray Magee failed a late fitness test; "The policy, " he says, "of lads has been to just take it." When a selector phoned Regan after the team for Dublin was picked, however, Regan refused to bite his lip.

"He asked me how I was. I said, 'I'm f**kin' pissed off is how I am. What's the story?'

He told me they felt I hadn't gone that well in training on the Tuesday night. Now, I might have won only three balls but I still ended up scoring two points; the rest of the time my man had his arms around me. I said to the selector, 'In Croke Park, that will be called as fouling; the ref would have given me five frees.' He said I should have been able to break him off, that it [the man-handling] was part of the game.' I said, 'Well, if it's part of the game, why's he not starting on Sunday so?'" Flynn had seen this before.

Boylan only trusted in Ollie Murphy fully by the time Ollie was in his mid-20. s; similarly, he obviously had reservations about Regan. And on this one, the great man had got it wrong. Regan's ball-winning ability . . . or lack of . . . wasn't striking. His scoring rate and dedication was. Boylan should have been looking at what the player did rather than what he didn't. Feedback, Mickey Harte has often said, is the breakfast of champions. For all Boylan's reputation as a man manager, Meath footballers like Regan in recent times were going starving.

"Look, I have the ultimate respect for Sean, " stresses Regan. "He's won everything;

I've won nothing. Maybe not talking to fellas was his way of keeping fellas on their toes but personally I found it frustrating. I once picked up one of the lads [the selectors] on it when they hinted something about winning ball. I said to him, 'If I score three from play as well as three from frees [his average per game], I must be winning enough of my own ball.

Besides, there are plenty of fellas who can win ball and then can't kick it over the bar.

I'm there to score.'" That's what he did when he finally come on against the Dubs; score what proved to be Meath's only point from play after half-time. Then, in the closing minutes, Barry Cahill dived in to block his shot and innocuously caught him on the right ankle. With Stephen O'Shaughnessy jumping in from the other side, Regan found himself being propelled into the air before landing on his back.

Regan thought he was merely winded but in the dressing room, he needed Graham Geraghty to take off his boots.

The following Tuesday morning after he could barely get dressed, he walked into casualty in Navan hospital. They were amazed he could; the first thing they did was put him into a wheelchair before confirming he had fractured three bones at the bottom of his back. There was a chance he might never play again.

If Regan's story is about anything though, it is about persistence. When he kept being overlooked by Boylan despite his St Michael's clubmate Martin O'Connell's consistent championing, Regan continued to dream and score. When he did finally get the call-up in 2002, he was a benchwarmer; his response was to average five points a game in the following year's league and championship.

When that 2003 season ended with a broken wrist sustained in the win over Monaghan in Clones, causing him to miss the defeat to Fermanagh at the same venue, he came back to score 2-6 the following summer against the same team.

He likewise recovered from the heartbreaker and backbreaker that was the summer of '05. Within 10 weeks, he was back doing some work in the pool. Six weeks after that he was back at work and scoring 1-5 from play for Michael's in their county junior final win. Six weeks after that again, he was playing and winning Railway Cups for Leinster. Now he wants to win Leinster.

"I'm 28 now and I've still to win anything with Meath. I don't want to be remembered as someone who played for five or six years with middling Meath teams; I want to win Leinsters and All Irelands. Eamon [Barry] is thinking that way. He's freshened the whole thing up. He's big into fitness and tactics and stats and everyone he has in is hungry. It's better to have lads who really want it than maybe a few lads who deep down possibly don't want it like they once did."

Last Sunday against Westmeath, Flynn sensed a tenacity in Meath's play which had been absent in recent seasons. He also found them playing with a promising fullforward line of Martin Doran, Joe Sheridan and Regan. His hope is that Barry shows faith and patience with them all.

"Even the last day, you had people say about Daithi, 'He was quiet enough when John Keane was moved onto him.'

John Keane is an All Star; he's quietened a lot of forwards. If Joe and Daithi or Martin Doran has a bad game, people need to lay off and let them develop their game. Forwards thrive on confidence and I think it would have been more useful to leave Joe and Daithi on for the last ten minutes of games.

Daithi just needs someone to tell him, 'We're building the team around you.' Few enough teams have a forward as good as him."

And even fewer forwards as patient as him.