Darragh Ó Sé: Rian O'Neill being back for Armagh is good news for everyone, especially Rian O'Neill
Rian O'Neill coming back to play for Armagh is win-win all around. It's good for
Armagh
, good for Kieran McGeeney, good for supporters. It's even good for the rest of us who are looking in from the outside. If you can have a championship with Rian O'Neill in it, you're better off than having him sitting at home.
But most of all, it's good for Rian O'Neill. When you're that talented, you have to play. Whatever stopped him getting involved at the start of the year, getting out and doing the thing he's best at can only be a good thing. Get out on the grass, get in among your friends, feel the love of the crowd. Go and do it.
Does it create issues in a dressingroom? That depends on the dressingroom. In Armagh's case, I'd say there's no chance of it, high up or low down. For one thing, being All-Ireland champions tends to iron out an awful lot of issues. This is a squad that has everything going for it – age profile, panel depth, management. It's well able to look around the rest of the championship and have no fear of anyone.
What you have that, everyone knows what's on offer here. Nobody involved in that group will be in any doubt that there's the potential for a second All-Ireland in the group. There might even be more. Are you really going to get cranky because someone of Rian O'Neill's calibre has been brought back in? What sort of tolerance do you think there would be for your point of view?
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Every dressingroom has a few tiers, whether you like it or not. The top tier of players will only see upside in O'Neill coming back. The next tier – the ones who are on the fringes of the team but regularly in the match day 26 – they won't be annoyed either. They'll see it as a challenge. Whose spot is he taking? Well he isn't taking mine, I'll tell you that for nothing.
If anyone is sore about it at all, it will be the players on the fringe of the panel. We know Armagh carry a big squad already and this is one more body ahead of them in the queue. But even then, they aren't fool enough to think that Rian O'Neill is their actual competition. The job isn't any more difficult now than it was a month ago. And if you think it is, there's only one solution. We're defending Sam Maguire here – suck it up and get better.
This is all down to brilliant management by Kieran McGeeney. The loyalty he shows every player who plays under him is getting its payback. They all know he will go above and beyond the call of duty for them and so there's going to be no giving out. I'd be surprised if there was ever even a conversation about it. I'd say it was just, 'Good news everyone, Rian is back.'
Armagh manager Kieran McGeeney during Saturday's game against Derry at the Athletic Grounds. Photograph: Ryan Byrne/Inpho
McGeeney is able to get that buy-in anywhere he goes. Even now, 15 years later, if you ask any Kildare player who played under him, they'd say the same thing. They know you only get one go at an intercounty career – they had McGeeney for the part of theirs when they were playing their best football and they'd have done anything for him. They're still sore at their county board for giving him the door.
It's noticeable that Armagh very rarely lose players. Tyrone won the All-Ireland a few years ago and five lads walked out the door over the following winter. But whether Armagh have had good times or bad times under McGeeney, you very rarely hear of anyone throwing their hat at it and walking away. My guess is that a dressingroom as tight as that would have had no issue with O'Neill coming back in.
It has happened a good few times over the years, even in teams that are contending. Stephen O'Neill came out of retirement for
Tyrone
. Diarmuid Connolly disappeared from the Dubs for a summer and only landed back in after a visa problem stopped him going to the US.
Dublin's Diarmuid Connolly during the 2019 All-Ireland final replay against Kerry. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho
In both cases, these were top-class forwards coming back in to take the place of someone else who had been there all year, doing all the slog. But neither Mickey Harte nor Jim Gavin were turning them away. They knew they could help win Sam Maguire.
When Mike McCarthy came back into the Kerry squad halfway through 2009, he hadn't played a game for Kerry in three years. But as soon as he landed back in the dressingroom, there wasn't one bit of grumbling from anyone. The only question anyone had for Mike was, 'How soon can you start?'
Certain players are above reproach. This was one of the best defenders in Kerry football, plain and simple. The fact that he was back in playing with us was only good news. Whatever he was going to be able to add, we'd take it.
It's the same with Rian O'Neill. McGeeney isn't stupid. He was a player himself, in good teams and in bad teams. He knows that on some level, everybody has their own racket going on. Somewhere, in quiet corners, probably in cars going home from training, there'll be a couple of fellas bitching about the fact that they were killing themselves in the muck and the shite last November and Rian wasn't.
Kerry's Mike McCarthy during the 2010 Munster final. Photograph: Cathal Noonan/Inpho
There's only one reaction to that kind of talk. Cry me a river, boys. The All-Ireland quarter-final is four weeks away. There's a chance here to do what no Armagh team has ever done and what no Ulster team has done since the early-1960s. Do you want to sing a sad song or do you want to go after back-to-back All-Irelands?
Rian O'Neill is one of those trigger players that every team needs. He is hard-wired into the supporters – they feed off the things he does in a way that doesn't happen with other players. He scored a point in the first half against Derry and the whole terrace went mad for it.
It's like when Damien Comer scores a goal for Galway – there's a different type of reception for it than when Rob Finnerty scores one. It's like the supporters are going, 'We have our main man back – come and take us on now.'
There aren't many Rian O'Neills in the country. He's like a universal remote – you can put him to work in any position from six to 14. If you can get him back on the field, you don't even think twice about it.
Armagh were a force to reckon with anyway. They're even stronger now.
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