By Daire Walsh

After watching on from the outside as they lost to Leitrim at the same stage of the competition 12 months ago, Niamh O’Neill was back to play a starring role for Tyrone in their TG4 All-Ireland intermediate football championship final triumph last weekend.

Following a two-year stint in Australia – during which time she played Gaelic football for Sinn Fein in Melbourne and Australian Rules with Casey Demons in the VFLW – O’Neill returned to the Red Hand panel earlier this year. Previously the Tyrone captain in 2022, she wasn’t initially part of the set-up when their Lidl National Football League Division One campaign began at home to Meath on January 26.

Yet she subsequently re-emerged on the inter-county scene and while a hamstring injury did reduce her to a substitutes’ role for an extended period, she registered 1-5 off the bench when Tyrone defeated Westmeath after extra-time in a gripping All-Ireland intermediate semi-final. The Sperrin Og star was then restored to the starting line-up for last Sunday’s second-tier showpiece against Laois in Croke Park and proceeded to amass an impressive tally of seven points in a 2-16 to 1-13 victory.

“Obviously at the start you’re just not too sure of what to do, whether to go back or not. I was back home probably a month before I decided to reach out and see if I could go back. I hadn’t really trained much when I had first come home. I didn’t want to go in unfit or anything,” O’Neill explained.

“I did my own thing for a wee while and then reached out to Darren (McCann, Tyrone manager) after I went and watched them play Armagh in the league. Just reached out to see if it would be okay to come back in and see how we get on.

“It has been brilliant, it hasn’t really felt like I’ve been away. The championship itself, maybe it was a wee bit frustrating because I had hurt my hamstring. I was only really coming on off the bench, but I managed to get myself fit enough to start the final, which was great.”

O’Neill found herself experiencing a familiar emotion upon full-time last weekend as she is one of a select few within the Tyrone squad to have been part of their previous TG4 All-Ireland intermediate football championship final success back in 2018. Facing a Meath side that contained six players who started Sunday’s All-Ireland senior showpiece against Dublin, O’Neill was introduced as a 12th minute substitute and scored 1-3 in an emphatic win for the Ulster outfit.

Despite acknowledging she’d have preferred if Tyrone had remained in the senior championship after returning to the top-tier in 2019, O’Neill stressed it was ‘a brilliant feeling’ to climb the Hogan Stand steps once again and she believes it could do wonders for the younger players within the Tyrone set-up.

“It’s a funny one because whenever you win the intermediate once, you kind of don’t really want to be back there, if that makes sense. Any time you win in Croke Park, there is very few people that get to say they’ve done that. It’s obviously a brilliant feeling that way, but it is a bit of a funny one when you’ve won it before.

“It’s not really a title you want to be winning all the time, without sounding ungrateful! It is brilliant, given we have a very young group there coming through. A lot of girls that played there, they’re only between 19 to maybe 23. They’re very young.

“To get that sort of taste for success at that level is brilliant. Hopefully they can sort of bring that ambition into their football now for the next few years and see where we go.”

In addition to featuring for Tyrone in the All-Ireland senior football championship from 2019 to 2021, O’Neill also sampled life at the top grade of the LGFA during her earliest years on the Red Hand panel. First introduced to their senior set-up as a 16 year old in 2012, O’Neill was a regular starter when Tyrone’s run in the Brendan Martin Cup came to an end three years later.

There were some mixed results for O’Neill and the county throughout those previous campaigns, but she is hopeful the current group of players can cement their senior championship status in 2026.

“When I first came in, I think we were sort of in a period of transition as well. Girls were retiring and different things like that. I think after we won it [intermediate] in 2018, we handled ourselves well in senior for a couple of years.

“Then again you’ve people leaving and going to travel. Hopefully now this time we can get a bit of stability and keep a core group together. I’ve no fear really of playing senior championship. Obviously you want to stay in it, that’s the first target, but hopefully stay in it and compete in it would be the dream.”

Although last Sunday’s All-Ireland intermediate final brought an end to a hectic season for Tyrone, O’Neill made a return to training with Sperrin Og two days later in preparation for a club encounter on Thursday.

This represents a swift reintegration to the local scene for O’Neill, but as she explains, county stars regularly line out for their clubs throughout the year in Tyrone.

“They’re not letting us away for too long. Straight back in and there’ll be club games now I’d say every Thursday and Sunday for the next month. In Tyrone we play our club league. Obviously they put games off whenever we get to a certain point,” O’Neill added.

“Tyrone are one of the very few counties I would say that have their county players playing for their club the whole time. I played our first league game, but then I obviously hurt my hamstring against Down [in the All-Ireland series]. Thankfully the club were very understanding and nobody pressured me into playing if I wasn’t able to.

“Because they’re obviously conscious that we were doing quite well with county and that you wanted to give as much as you could to the championship. Thankfully not too much pressure on me, but now that it’s over, I’d say that will be done!”

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