EU Championship - medal, European Championship - medal.' In boxing, praise never comes without pressure. The expectations for 2006 ranked high in both categories.

It's one of the reasons why winning European Boxer of the Year just a few weeks ago has meant so much to the 25year-old. Fulfilment. Recognition. The continuation of a journey. It's why the walls of his bedroom in his parents' house in Clondalkin are lost behind more and more memories with each passing year.

Two national titles at middleweight, more recently four national titles at light heavyweight, four nations medals, multi-nations honours. And now a gold from the EU Championship and a bronze from the European Championships. Fulfilment.

It's a long way from the boy who cried the first night he boxed in the school hall they called their gym in Neilstown.

His father was a chef who liked to watch George Foreman and Marvin Hagler. His older brother Willie tried his best to box like them. It was that same brother who introduced him to it all, bringing him along one evening only for one of the seniors to throw a few punches and send Ken to the toilets in tears. Many year's later, that same senior came back to the club. Egan was 19 at the time and asked him to step into the ring for a round or two. Never muttering a word about his motivation, he sent his opponent packing that night. The pain he inflicted meant Egan hasn't seen him since.

"Funny how things come around. Like, my brother was a really good boxer, great body puncher. He used to leave me on my knees when he'd go low. But a few years back, he brought me into town one day sparring. He was out of shape, and I was getting bigger. I gave him a busted nose and we were moving around the ring and he couldn't get out of the way of my shots. I actually felt sorry for him with blood coming out of his face. He said after that, 'I'm never getting in again'. That's how things turn so you've to make the most of it while you can. And especially with my love of boxing and the way it's been so good to me. Like when I joined the club, I was young but there were an awful lot of seniors there, guys that would have been 19 or 20. I was looking up to them. I knew most of them because we were neighbours for a while in Neilstown before we moved.

"Now when I see them or hear about them, some are junkies, some are locked up, some are dead. At the time they were in the club, they were doing something constructive with their lives, training, getting fights. I'm still getting to do that. Now I go back there and help the kids when I can. When they are in the gym you can keep an eye on them and they can be the best in the world but when they leave the club, I can't go out after them and keep an eye on them. It's up to them at that point. But Neilstown years ago was rampant with drugs and people were robbing cars and joyriding and things like that. It's not as bad now."

Noel Humpston would have told you how bad it used to be and about the problems there. A trainer at the club for much of his life, he lived in Walkinstown and used to collect Egan every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday before training. He retired from work in 2000 but continued to give his heart and hands to the club and to Egan.

He died of a brain haemorrhage a few weeks later as his club prepared to celebrate 21 years of existence. Egan got word of him being taken ill the night of a bout in the National Stadium. He was told the next day of his passing.

"I nearly got sick when I heard. I couldn't believe it.

He was coaching me up to November 2000. It was just before the world juniors, we were going to Hungary. He never said much, but when he did you listened. He told me to keep the head down. He always mentioned the assholes that are going to be there beside you outside the club. He told me people would bring me down the wrong road and told me it's not them that has to get into the ring on a Sunday morning sparring.

He was right. Terrible nice, himself and the wife were a lovely couple. And what made it worse was, for all his years working at the club in Neilstown, he never saw anyone he had helped win a senior title. A few months later I won that title and he wasn't there. It was heartbreaking but you've got to move on."

Earlier this week Egan sat down and watched his hero's greatest moment of 2006.

Oscar De La Hoya faced a junction in his life as he prepared to tackle the tough but mouthy Ricardo Mayorga.

The Mexican had spent the week of the fight talking about De La Hoya's mother and girlfriend, letting him know he was past it and warning him of what awaited.

The technician versus the bully. On 6 May at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, the technician won in the sixth with a brilliant flurry. A perfect puncher, Egan has watched hours of tapes of De La Hoya from the time he won a gold medal in Barcelona. But he's also picked up on that headdown attitude and a refusal to throw in the towel.

It stood to him in June when the Irish team went to a training camp in Moscow, ahead of the European Championships. Everything was going wrong. A hand injury left him with just the one glove to throw in anger. In his business, so often, two is not enough.

"I was waking up every morning over there and doubting myself. I'm not arrogant but you don't want to go to the other extreme. I just didn't want to be there. I got a bruise under my eye and that cut up. I had an injury in my hand too. This was in June. The Europeans were in July. There's a tendon that runs over your knuckle and there's a bit of tissue that covers your tendon. The whole tissue was worn away so the tendon was slipping off the side of the knuckle and down onto the side every time I closed my hand. And if I made contact with anybody it was suicide.

"Basically what happened was a bad left hook and what happens is when you throw it, it's supposed to land square.

But sometimes when you are throwing it a bit short, that knuckle connects first and takes all the impact and that's where you do all the damage.

So every day I was getting up and saying right, I'm in the ring and I want to throw it, but my brain was not letting me because I knew it was going to be sore.

"But we went to the Europeans in Bulgaria and things started to come together. I won through to the semifinals handy enough and that was a medal secured. At that stage I had done what I'd set out to which was get on the podium, but I hurt my hand in the quarter-finals with the same punch I threw in the EU tournament. I got treatment on it and cortisone injections into the knuckle but I still knew myself it was going to be a hard fight against the Russian [Artur Beterbiyev] in the semi-final.

He's shit hot. He's number one. I know I have the beating of him though. I know I have.

Okay, he beat me that day but I was throwing my right well and I was hitting him and I wasn't getting the scores for it. But he was throwing shots and the lads were saying he was going up in twos. He didn't even hit me well in the first and I was down 10 points.

I was sitting on the stool saying this is a f**king joke. The same carry on in the second, the two of us hitting each other and the bell rings for the 20-point rule. Disgrace.

Disgusting."

But the head remains down. The towel remains in the corner.

? ? ? There's symmetry to Egan's story that increasingly suggests a destiny in his boxing career. Just as his father had marvelled at Foreman in his pomp, Kenneth marvelled at him too. It was 2001 when the Neilstown club went to Houston, Texas. One minute they were sitting in a restaurant with Foreman inquiring if their ribs were okay or if they'd like another shake. Another minute they were sitting in the front row of the former heavyweight's chapel, watching him play guitar and swab his forehead with a large white towel between chorus and verse.

Egan was the star of that trip and was set to fight but another injury prevented him taking on an American opponent. It didn't prevent interest from Foreman though, who told Egan if he ever wanted to go pro, there was plenty of room at his gym for a boxer with such ability.

"You should see his hands, they are like buckets and there is just an aura around the guy. What a character.

He has 10 children. His five sons are all called after him.

There's George Jr, George III, George IV, George V, and George VI and one of his daughters is called Georgetta because he said, he 'wants them to know who his father is'. He was there talking one minute and the next he's on a jet, flying off to commentate on some title bout. A gentleman and it was very flattering that he offered a place if I wanted to go pro. But at the moment I'm happy with what I'm doing and I think people respect that.

"I know my mates do. Like, with the lifestyle and all, I can't go out and do the things they do. They go out and tell me about it and what happened and what way. . . well, you know, with girls and stuff.

Fair play to them. There was a stage when I was jealous but then I just look at the boxing and what I have that no one else has. I have a gift. I am a talented boxer and they come and watch me. They have their normal nine-tofive and I respect them for that and they respect me. At weekends I'd be training and I wouldn't even hear from them. They don't ring me from the middle of a nightclub and say, 'Here Kenneth, talk to her'. They could be doing that and take the piss but they respect what I do.

"Maybe going pro is something I could do in the future but there's only one thing I want to do now. The first set of qualifiers for it are in September at the World Championships in Moscow. I have to get to the last eight. There are other qualifiers after that but I'd love to qualify this year because after that it's getting too close. It's like farting with the runs, it's very risky. It's realistic though. I can do it. There's not many in Europe who'd beat me and as I said I've never been cocky, that's just the way I feel at the moment."

Last week another piece of paper was pinned to the same wall on the South Circular Road. Again, there was Egan's name but beside it lay only eight letters. Self-imposed he realised as he smiled and thought ahead. 'Kenneth Egan: Olympics.'