But the young full-back is homeless in his home state. And it is the apathy of the state government which has made Tirkey a bitter man.

Though Tirkey hails from a remote tribal village of Sundargarh district, he considers Bhubaneswar as his second home, where he and his India team-mate Lazarus Barla work for Indian Airlines.

On January 25, 1997, Tirkey wrote to chief minister JB Patanaik requesting him to allot a government quarter. But despite the CM's recommendation, the quarter has not yet been allotted.

``Other state governments reward their Olympians with housing and land. Dhanraj Pillay (Maharashtra), Shakeel Ahmed and Sujit Kumar (both UP) are some of the Olympians to have received such reward. Here, I only applied for a government quarter for which I would have paid rent. It would have saved me from taking shelter regularly at my friend's house in AG Colony. But the response has been humiliating,''says Tirkey.

Accommodation rule:

According to the young Olympian, the chief minister, in his recommendation, directed the Department of General Administration to allot him a Type-V quarter on the basis of Special Accommodation Rule 1959, Clause 4 (I).

But the file only gathered dust in the State Secretariat, at the office of RB Patnaik, the additional director, Estate. Whenever Tirkey returned to the city from his national duty, he made it a point to run to the Secretariat with the hope that the authorities would help him getting the quarter.

But every time he was turned back with a familiar reply: ``No Type-V quarter is vacant now. And moreover, the CM is recommending so many cases. We cannot oblige them all.''

That the authorities were trying to fool Tirkey was finally discovered sometime in July/August this year, when the hockey star, after a laborious search, found that a vacancy had occurred at quarter No VR-60 in the Unit-6 area. He immediately met the additional director, Estate, andrequested him to allot the quarter.

Quarters for VIP: ``But to my disbelief, the bureaucrat told me that the said quarter had been reserved for a VIP. Later, I found the name plate of Khurda MLA Dilip Srichandan fixed on that quarter,'' recalls Tirkey.

Last week, when Tirkey made another visit to the Secretariat, he found the additional estate director who considered a MLA a VIP and an Olympian an ordinary person, was not there. But his file was as immovable as it was earlier.

``I met the new additional director Purnendu Kumar Nanda, who expressed no knowledge of the file and asked me to submit a fresh application. When I produced the file before him (thanks to the concerned clerk Prabhat Das, who promptly brought the file) gave the same assurance that I would be allotted a quarter as and when there would be a vacancy,'' says Tirkey.

Now, Tirkey has come to a conclusion that he would never get a government quarter, no matter who recommended his case. But the whole exercise has left a bitterfeeling in his mind.

``If the government did not want to give me a quarter, the authorities should have said that frankly. What hurts me is that I was taken for a ride,'' said Tirkey.