ATHLETICS:The Irish track athlete of the year is well aware you don't always get what you deserve, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

DERVAL O'ROURKE ducks inside the doorway, hood up, gym bag swung over her shoulder, out of the lashing rain.

"Sorry I'm late," she says. "You ordered lunch yet?"

She sees what I'm reading. "What did you think of the match?"

I ask it back it her. She places a large white beaker on the counter. Protein shake. Chocolate flavour.

"What did I think of the match?"

Fair is unfair. Cheaters sometimes win. You don't always get what you deserve. There is no mystery about it. The game goes on.

I look at her and think, here's a girl who knows what she's talking about. She looks at me. Welcome to my world. No apologies.

"Cheating happens. In every sport. It happens in every walk of life. I don't understand why people are still so shocked by it. Whenever there's money involved, people will cheat. It was a pain. It was unfair. And I felt for the players.

"But at the same time, I thought if Ireland had scored a goal like that we'd have taken it. We'd have run with it. You have to flip it, and look at it that way. And there was 20 minutes left. You can't let the heads drop. These things happen.

"But that's sport. You have to take the crap stuff same as the good stuff."

Derval has taken her share of both. More than her fair share. Good in 2006, great. Crap in 2007, worse than crap last year. Good in 2009, great again.

It just kills me, I tell her, how athletics still gets this bad rap, this everyone-is-on-drugs mentality, the loss of credibility, and so on - when what goes on in soccer is just as bad. It's been going on for years. Soccer rewards dishonesty way more than any other sport. Everyone out there is chancing their arm, so to speak. Or else diving.

At least if an athlete takes drugs it's done in the privacy of their home.

"I don't know," she says. "But with handling the ball, it's a split-second decision. When an athlete takes drugs, it's a long, drawn-out process. You obviously give it a lot of thought. Thierry Henry thought about that for, what, a tenth of a second? It's not a lot of time to reflect on the consequences. But if you start taking drugs in athletics you have a lot of time to deal with the consequences."

So what Thierry Henry did wasn't as bad as an athlete talking drugs?

"I just think it's a little unfair to label him a cheat. People have done a lot worse. Even by diving. But then I never think too much about athletes taking drugs. And I never read about it. It would depress me too much. Because I can't control it. That's life."

Indeed. I mention a couple of athletes I reckon have denied Derval championship medals in the past. And she's not alone. For years the only crime in athletics was getting caught. At least they've begun the crackdown. Hard.

Soccer, I suggest, has a long way to go.

"I know there have been loads of question marks about athletes that have beaten me. But I don't ever go there. It might be different if I was really motivated by, say, the grand prix circuit, the money. Unfortunately, I'm not. I almost wish in some sense that I was. It would be great to run 12.6 in the Golden League every week. But then it would all be about the reproduction of those times, week in week out.

"I'm much more into running well at championships, and genuinely feel that if I'm at my best at a championship, mentally and physically, then not many people can beat me. Whether they're on drugs or not."

That's because she's so hard-core, I joke. To come back from where she did. Down in 2007, out in 2008. Then, European Indoor bronze last March. Fourth in the Worlds last August. 12.67 seconds. Fastest 100 metre hurdler in Europe.

"I'm hard-core, but I'm not that hard-care. Like, I couldn't do what Katie Taylor does. Get in the ring? No way. Don't touch the face. I'm way too girly for that.

"But you either come back tougher, or you crumble, and your career is done. I think this was it. My comeback year."

So how close did she come to quitting?

"Well, I had to think about. It's not that I wanted to retire - I had to decide why I wanted to keep going.

"You can't do it if you're not doing it for the right reasons. At some point during those two years I was doing it for the wrong reasons, lost sight of how much I loved it. I got torn with things that I shouldn't have. But I also got injured. It's easier to be distracted when you're injured.

"But sport doesn't owe you anything. Just because you've done stuff in the past. You have to work extremely hard, every year. Get the fight back.

"Mentally I was in such a better place going to Berlin. When I got to the start line, I felt bullet-proof. I really thought I was going to win. I didn't look the entire race, came through the line, and dipped. I was shocked to see there were three people ahead of me. I was gutted."

Does she think any of those girls might have been on drugs?

"I don't look at too many athletes and think that they are. Maybe I'm giving too much respect to their ability. But I've run 12.67. I know I'm not on drugs, and I'm certainly not the most talented girl in the world. I've taken the bit of talent, worked extremely hard on it, and had some brilliant people around me. I know there are athletes who are way more talented, and so of course can run 12.4, without taking drugs."

We wonder if soccer, like athletics, will start cleaning up its act now. Like the way they've told Rashid Ramzi to hand back the gold medal won in the 1,500 metres in the Beijing Olympics. That was 15 months ago, but the way athletics sees it, it's not too late to right this wrong.

Ramzi passed a test after Beijing, but earlier this year, when they realised a new form of EPO was doing the rounds, all samples was retested. Ramzi, who no one trusted anyway, was busted.

It's a pity it's too late to retest samples from the 1993 World Championships, when that Chinese trio denied Sonia O'Sullivan a medal in the 3,000 metres.

Or the 1980 Olympics, when Eamonn Coghlan was denied the 5,000 metres bronze by Finland's Kaarlo Maaninka, who later admitted to blood doping.

And look what they've done with the false start rule! That was the last loophole, a way of upsetting opponents. Now it's gone. One false start and you're out. It's getting a lot harder to be dishonest in athletics.

Then lunch arrives. I realise I haven't yet congratulated Derval on her award last Saturday. Irish track athlete of the year. Hard-earned. Fully deserved.

Fair and square.