ST PATRICK'S CLASSICAL SCHOOL, NAVANFormer Meath great and TV pundit Colm O'Rourke has yet another career: head of one of Leinster's finest footballing schools, wriets Sean Kenny

IT IS a curious thing. He is most noticed for the work he does the least. TV is his summer job. The real work is not televised.

He has that authority, the school principal. Colm O'Rourke takes long, loping strides through the washed-out yellow corridors. He ruffles hair, joshes with a pupil. He turns a corner, to where a large swathe of the Meath senior football panel await.

There on the wall he picks out the faces and names: Stephen Bray, Joe Sheridan, Kevin Reilly, Séamus Kenny, Niall McKeague, Cian Ward, his own son Shane. All past pupils of St Patrick's Classical School, Navan. Most had a Hogan Cup medal leaving.

Those framed faces are testaments to possibility.

"It would be an inspiration for lads here. You can always point to a fella like Shane, for example, who left here and was on the Meath senior team the following year. It's very tangible, the link with the school. The lads here who knew him could see him moving on. It's the same with the likes of Stephen Bray, the McKeagues and, going back, Trevor Giles and David Beggy."

He sits in his office. Otherwise plain, it has one small idiosyncrasy of decoration: a souvenir Aussie Rules ball in the corner. Football has followed him to the principal's office after two-and-a-half decades in the school.

O'Rourke has been knee-deep in the mud of colleges football since his arrival at St Pat's in the early 1980s. Those early years were a grey staleness, flat with pessimism. The school was a dimly flickering light in the football firmament.

"In the early years we didn't have anything like the success we've had recently. We didn't have the same sort of commitment. It was difficult enough to get fellas to play. But then Meath won a couple of All-Irelands in 1987 and 1988 and there was a big surge in interest."

Meath's later All-Ireland successes, in 1996 and 1999, were the real fillip the school needed. Young lads around Navan had new heroes: Giles, Geraghty, Fay. The regal swagger was back. Momentum was generated in the heat of enthusiasm.

The school won its first Hogan Cup in 2000, retained it, won a third in 2004 and were beaten finalists, after extra-time, in 2006. Queues started forming to play football in St Pat's.

"It creates a sense of community, and that's important," says O'Rourke. "Young lads need to belong to something. We've a great tradition built up over the last decade here and fellas want to play. It's a big thing for them. There's huge competition and it's an achievement in itself to get on one of the panels.

"We're drawing from clubs like Navan O'Mahony's, Simonstown, Walterstown, Seneschalstown, Skryne - clubs where there's a lot of good work going on at underage level.

"We wouldn't want to overdo the praise from our point of view in terms of lads we've had playing in the school. We helped them along the way, but there were more important people involved with them in their clubs who started them off. We got the best and the brightest and put a bit of gloss on."

He sees colleges football as a place where developing players can breathe at a higher altitude.

"With school they get introduced to a higher level of football. It's obviously higher than playing with their club at minor level. It's a far more competitive environment here because you have the cream of every club.

"For fellas themselves who want to be footballers, it's a great environment. Fellas who play well at senior colleges level can go on to county minor and are generally able to go on to be seniors."

What keeps him involved after all these years? He enjoys the banter. He likes the cyclical challenge of team building, renewed every September. There is a dynamic freshness to it that keeps him energised, the uncertainty and hope that every autumn brings.

"There's nothing more enjoyable than seeing a team develop, because every year you have to build a new team. The one team where you can always be sure people won't get fed up with you is a colleges team because the team changes.

"With most other teams, when you're with them three or four years, everybody's fed up with you. Fellas come back in September and you start working again. You don't have an idea what the team is like, who's going to be on it or anything else. It's very interesting putting a team together like that."

Team character, that quintessential trait of Meath football teams, is honed through the players' familiarity with one another in the school. Spirit is distilled from friendship.

"A colleges team is more of a team than any other because the lads know each other far better than they would in any other team they'll ever play with. They're obviously with each other all day, every day. So it's easier to have team spirit.

"It's more difficult for a county minor team coming together occasionally to try and develop that bond. The bond of colleges football is impossible to replicate."

After three Hogan Cups and a Meath senior league title won managing Simonstown Gaels, might he be tempted one day by the Meath job?

"I would be but there's a complication if your own son is involved. It's easy enough at school, where he's guaranteed to be on the team. But if it went to a situation where there was a doubt about him being on the team, it would be awkward and it'd be better for him and for me not to be involved."

That bullet dodged, he is off bounding around the school again. Off-camera, the real work continues.