PEARSE O’NEILL has one of the weirder back stories of any All-Ireland finalist. In the age of development squads and carefully monitored under-age stars, the role of the late developer runs counter to orthodox views of what constitutes the career path of an inter-county player.
It’s only three years since O’Neill started playing for Cork. Before 2006 he hadn’t pulled on a red jersey at any level.
He was away in Australia that year but an unscheduled return home culminated in his attracting the attention of not one but two county teams: the intermediate hurlers giving way to the senior footballers when Billy Morgan gave the towering Aghada man a call-up.
He had come to a prominence of sorts two years previously when TG4’s reality football programme Underdogs featured him at centrefield, together with Kerry’s 2006 Footballer of the Year Kieran Donaghy, on the team that defeated Kerry in the series’ televised live finale.
“Why not, like?” he says of his reaction to getting involved in the programme. “I just said I’d go with it and I was glad I did it. There was no major science to it.
“Mickey Ned (O’Sullivan), Jarlath Burns and Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh were there and in fairness the three of them were very good. I picked up a lot from the three of them. It’d keep you ticking over and make you think about things.”
O’Neill’s emergence at inter-county was swift from the moment he was invited onto the panel in 2006. His size and strength were complemented by a serious turn of pace and soon he had a place on the first 15, coming in for the drawn Munster final against Kerry in July of that year.
Sunday will be his 11th championship encounter with Kerry in the space of four seasons and his second All-Ireland against them. The first two years ago, started with hopes high but deteriorated into calamity.
“My recollection of the final in ‘07 is that it went so quick. A lot of people say it passes you by and then the game was over and I said, ‘Jesus, it happened so quick’. There’s no point saying otherwise, and I didn’t play well. It’s just something that we have to learn from and build on.”
In the aftermath, Morgan stepped down and O’Neill’s club-mate Conor Counihan took over. He says he remembers the manager’s playing days when Cork were last on top of the football world 20 years ago.
“Of course. He was the big name. I was about 10 or 11 when Conor was winning All-Irelands. Obviously he’s a massive influence. You’d watch him on telly and you’d try to emulate him.”
If Counihan’s first year in 2008 didn’t signal any dramatic change in the Cork-Kerry relationship – Cork winning in Munster and losing in Croke Park – there was a subtle shift in the nature of the matches.
Cork showed resilience in adversity, coming back in both the drawn All-Ireland semi-final and its replay to push Kerry harder than had happened in previous engagements at that level.
The year ended well on a personal note for O’Neill with selection on the Ireland team that regained the Cormac McAnallen trophy after last winter’s international rules victory in Australia as well as his being chosen as Cork Sportsperson of the Year.
Like all of the team he doesn’t want to dwell on the negatives of the county’s record at Croke Park against Kerry.
“It’s another game, between four white lines. We’ve been playing in Croke Park now long enough. We’ve been playing Kerry long enough. There hasn’t been that much focus on the whole Kerry thing.
“It’s a means to winning a title no matter who we’re playing and it just happens that it’s Kerry and obviously that brings a bit more spice given the games we’ve had against them recently.
“If you’re going to have a mental block about them you might as well not turn up like. There’s a lot of perceptions about this Cork team that we have no control over.
“We can only deal with the controllables and our own mental attitude is within our own control and I think our mental attitude is good at the moment. It has been for the last few years.”
Neither is he going to be led astray by suggestions that Kerry’s form – the Dublin match aside – has been patchy and unimpressive this season. Even after the big quarter-final performance they didn’t exactly take flight in the next match.
“They did what they had to do to win,” says O’Neill. “Meath are always a very hard team to play against.
“But in 2007 we hammered Meath and it didn’t count for anything in the final.We’ve had a good win against Tyrone but it won’t count for anything unless we win on Sunday.”
Pearse O'Neill
Club: Aghada.
Occupation: Accountant/farmer.
Age: 29.
Height: 6ft 5in.
Weight: 16st.
Honours: Munster SFC (2006, ’08 and ’09), NFL (Division Two 2009).
