Ronan O'Neill has revealed that he nearly quit the Tyrone set-up after enduring a frustrating season in 2015.

The Omagh sharpshooter, who did not feature in the Red Hands' All-Ireland SFC semi-final defeat to Kerry last August, has turned it around this year and scored 2-2 in last Sunday's comfortable Ulster SFC win over Derry at Celtic Park.

"I had to think long and hard in the off-season whether I wanted to be with Tyrone this season or if I was good enough to be there," O'Neill said in today's Irish Independent.

"And decided I gave it a right good lash in the off-season and see where that took me. I got a run in the McKenna Cup and it took off from there.

"I played well in a run of games and with the run of games, comes confidence and with confidence, you play better. I stated before that I was probably not up to the level of county standard and probably learned the hard way too, seeing a lot of different boys getting chances ahead of me.

"I just knuckled down this year, did a bit of hard work myself and lucky enough that I got a couple of chances at the start of the year."

On the victory over the Oak Leafers, he added: "It was quite surprising to see that Derry had maybe only one defender back but then again maybe that was to do with our game-plan. We had sucked them in and everyone had pushed forward. We know the next day there won't be so much space."

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