WHEN Oisin O’Neill was called up to play for the Armagh seniors in 2017, he could see the wide open highway right in front of him.
This was the road for him.
The problem was, Kieran McGeeney was looking at a completely different road – one with a much steeper gradient.
Five years into his senior inter-county career now, O’Neill is much wiser and smiles at his own naivety.
“Kieran has taught me what it is to be an inter-county footballer,” O'Neill says, favoured to win a starting place in Sunday's All-Ireland Qualifier against Tyrone.
“Probably previous to coming in here I would have had the mind-set of what it was to be a footballer. But Kieran wasn’t long showing me, and probably everyone in our group, really what it is to be a high performing athlete, the levels of details and commitment and sacrifice to try and reach that.
“In 2017, I was 19 when I first came in and you don’t appreciate it for what it is. You're still at college and there are certain distractions and I probably didn’t get the most out of myself. Now I understand what it takes to try and perform at this level and the hard work that it takes. You almost have more respect for your own body and try and be in the best physical condition you can be in on game day.
“Then, tactically, every day you go out and play you are learning something about what the opposition does or that your team does and you always try and bank those experiences for when your team may need to call on them in the future.”
O’Neill was an undoubted star player in his underage years and college days with St Colman’s, Newry. Like his younger brother Rian, he made the game look easy.
He can't imagine playing for Armagh without Rian.
“There’s only 18 months between Rian and myself,” he says.
“We always played in the same underage teams right from we were U8. I was eight and Rian would have been six and he was playing with us.
“At St Colman’s we were playing MacRory Cup together, I was 7th year and he was 5th year so we know each other’s games so well. I couldn’t tell you the last time I played a game and he wasn’t involved in it.
“It was always competitive [between us]. The back garden was always a bit of craic. Sometimes my mam’s hand would have been sore beating the window. It’s just like any set of siblings who are close in age and have a common interest, we’re naturally very close.
“We share lifts to training every night and you always have the craic. It’s easier to do it when someone is living with you and they’re making the same sacrifices that you are, whether it’s doing your recovery session or your extra gym session.”
As O’Neill has set about climbing football’s rungs, he’s developed an acute sense of being part of a collective – “giving yourself to something bigger” is how the Crossmaglen man phrases it.
He realised this more than ever when he took a year out in 2018 and headed to America. It’s a bit like what former Dublin footballer Cian O’Sullivan said recently about the notion of missing out on friends’ weddings and stags because of the commitments required to play elite sport.
“Now,” O’Sullivan said, “on the far side I realise that stuff is not what it’s cracked up to be. I wouldn’t for one second have traded playing in that team for any of the them.”
O’Neill shares the same worldview as the Dubliner.
“I’d say this journey is the journey of your career,” he says. “It’s definitely worth the sacrifices that you do make.
“Being a part of it and knowing that isn’t just about yourself...
“Look, I had a great time and I’d definitely advise any young fella to travel once, but when you do come back you almost have a greater appreciation of what you were missing when you were away.
“You’ve friends for life here. This team has been together for the last four or five years and there are a lot of us in the same age range. We have a couple of new fellas coming in every year but this is a really tight bunch. We’ve been through tough times but I think that’s brought us closer together as well.”
A back-to-back county championship winner with ‘Cross in 2018 and ’19, O’Neill was also a key member of the St Mary’s Sigerson-winning team in 2017 alongside Tyrone stars Cathal McShane, Conor Meyler and Kieran McGeary whom he’ll encounter in Sunday’s clash at The Athletic Grounds.
Winning Sigerson, O’Neill says, was a “nice achievement”, but adds: “Ultimately I still feel there are bigger prizes out there and those are the ones that we want to chase.”
A bit like Armagh’s trajectory over the past four or five years, O’Neill’s inter-county career has stuttered at times. Injury didn’t help his cause at the beginning of this season with Ciaran Mackin taking full advantage of O'Neill's absence.
The 24-year-old midfielder entered the fray for Connaire Mackin in the 50th minute against Donegal but Armagh’s purple patch had come and gone which didn’t translate into enough scores.
Rian O’Neill had the ball in Donegal’s net at the start of the second half, which would have been a game-changer, but it was controversially chalked off by referee Maurice Deegan. The elder O'Neill brother doesn’t dwell on Deegan’s decision and was more concentrated on Armagh’s inability to convert more chances.
“We just didn’t execute the game the way we wanted to and the way we pride ourselves on. When we have had good performances and good results in the past, it has been when our execution is high.
“That period of time that we owned the ball at the start of the second half (against Donegal) it wasn’t good enough and we know it will not be good enough against Tyrone.”
O’Neill doesn’t shy away from the fact that playing the Red Hands in their own backyard on Sunday is an advantage - but says the onus will be on the players to rally the Orchard faithful.
“I think the fans can have a big role to play but it’s up to the players on the pitch to give them something to get behind.”
