“The Garvaghey Gurriers.”
Ronan O’Neill has had quite the year, as the 29-year-old reached a lifelong dream in helping his county win only their fourth ever All-Ireland title.
The sharp shooter has been in and around the Tyrone set-up for over 10 years, but amazingly, it isn’t just his quick thinking on the GAA pitch that has led him to success this year.
8.7 million people are currently competing in the Premier League Fantasy competition, and the Omagh native is proudly sitting 12th in those rankings, and number one in Ireland.
Sometimes you just have to concede that some people can do it all, and the gun-slinging forward admits that it isn’t actually something he puts a great deal of time into.
“I would have a good bit of football knowledge in fairness, and maybe got a wee bit ahead of the curb on certain players, although it will be a wee bit difficult now as a few games are in doubt, so I might have to make some moves.
“I think it was about week 10 or 11, and I was around the 20,000 or 30,000 and the boys were telling me that it was good going, then I was below 10,000 and it just sort of spiralled on from that.”
O’Neill admitted that the Tyrone lads have their own private league (no prizes for guessing who is topping that), and added that a few of his fellow All-Ireland winning colleagues aren’t too bad either.
“We’re in a private group called ‘The Garvaghey Gurriers’. Our physio is second, I think Tiernan McCann is third, and Cathal McShane is after that.
“Cathal was top at the very start but I think he got a -32 one day, and I’ve been top pretty much since then – United fans can be a bit sentimental, like I only had Ronaldo in my team twice, but he blanked for me twice, so I had to get rid of him.
“I watch a lot of football obviously, and I liked the look of Conor Gallagher from Crystal Palace, so put him in my team, and then he scored, assisted, and scored.
“I managed to get Bernardo Silva in before most people as well, so that helped.”
O’Neill is a Liverpool fan and although he admits that can sometimes affect his decisions, the one bit of advice he has for other players is that you can’t be sentimental.
“I never wanted Jota in my team, I don’t even know why, I just thought there were better options. When Ben Chilwell got injured for me I replaced him with Virgil van Dijk, and he scored that week against Southampton.
“He kept a clean sheet also, and Mo Salah is probably the best player in the league to be fair, and obviously Trent gets all of the assists so I just keep them two players in, and I just happened to have Van Dijk in, but I’ll probably replace him soon enough.”
Another key factor to his success is the fact that he wasn’t stressing about the whole thing or doing anything mad overtime. O’Neill simply changes the teams before the big run of matches every week and that’s pretty much it.
Sometimes success can look easy and we’re led to believe that it’s because we don’t see the hard work that goes on in the background, but who knows – maybe doing less is more and success comes to those who don’t over think it?
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