O'Neill, Colm
January 24, 1997In an ideal world, the honours would be distributed with all the idealism proffered by a socialist's sporting charter but such is life that not even the gods of sport can get it right and so the likes of Tyrone may never, ever attain the Holy Grail. Sometimes sport holds no truck with all that we made mortals perceive as representative of justice served.
In an ideal, the O'Neill County would waltz home, unscathed, to a belated All-Ireland senior championship title win this year and the hurlers of Limerick would rejoice in welcoming home their long lost son. However sometimes sport holds….
The six million dollar question remains though. Can a battle weary Tyrone team achieve the unthinkable and win a third Ulster senior title in a row and thus put themselves in a position to see the shine glistening off Sam? Has the team still got the self-belief needed to take Sam home?
Such are the imponderables which combine to make the game of gaelic football such a fascinating business to predict, such an intriguing and unpredictable sport -and aren't we glad of it too!
In the list of runners and riders aiming to get their hands on the Sam Maguire Cup, the O'Neil County will start the championship season as one of the favourites to go the distance and finally claim the Holy Grail.
One man who sincerely hopes that the Danny Ball trained side can go where no Tyrone team has gone before is former county star Colm O'Neil.
These days Colm is arguably better known for his successful forays into the housing market than his Trojan displays at midfield, for the personably Ardboe gael is a director of Edenwood Homes, a go-ahead construction firm par excellence which was established back some seven years ago.
Involved principally in the construction of homes for the private housing market, Edenwood Homes is an extremely busy company and one very much in demand and having just completed work on 69 houses in Rathfarnham, the company is presently engaged in the construction of some 80 houses in Mornington, County Meath and also an extension at Heinz Custom foods (Dundalk). Business is booming as Colm confirms.
'Thankfully, 1996 was a very good year for us, especially in comparison to 1989 when we started up. Back then it was a very bad period for business and the recession at the time left a lot of construction companies struggling to make progress but luckily things turned around a few years after that and now things are going very well,' Colm told the Hogan Stand this week. Colm says that if the next 12 months are as good on the sales and production front as the last 12 were, he will be more than happy and he is confident that indeed will be the case.
'If interest rates remain low and the economy in general continues to hold its own, then we would be fairly confident of building something in the region of 50 to 60 houses this year,' Colm enthused.
Providing gainful, profitable employment to some 50 employees, Edenwood Homes is currently going from strength to strength and Colm likes to think that the firm will prosper even further over the next couple of years at least as the construction trade boom continues. 'At the minute the construction trade in general is going very well and from my own point of view if was able to build another 100 houses in mornington I would have no difficulty in selling them.
'An awful lot of people who work in north county Dublin are buying houses in the Mornington area. There is a huge demand for houses in the locality,'
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If they can get past Down then they will in with a very good chance of going the whole way, in Ulster, at least. I'd be wary of Cavan though. Martin McHugh has got them well organised and they would be the dark horses.'
Still living in Ardboe (although his business tends to keep him away from home quiet a bit), Colm likes to keep in touch with the fortunes of his native club. He has had a long association with them, after all.
One of a family of 12 (his brother Sean is a former selector with Ardboe), Colm has things gaelic running threw his veins, if the truth be known, for his father Arthur played with the O'Neill County at senior level. Born into the construction trade, the young O'Neill was a player before his time in the sense that such was his mobility, physique and ability to read the game that he would have been very much at home in the modern game.
'I think the modern-day game suited me down to the ground,' the ten and a half stone, 5ft 11 inches, fighting fit former player added The 'erstwhile county Minor, Under 21 and senior star was a no mean midfielder in his day with Ardboe O'Donovan Rossa and the county Senior County Championship title ( by beating Coalisland in the decider), Colm was a real greyhound of a player, the runner in midfield, an unusual species given the fashion of the time when big fetchers were very much de riguer with club and county coaches.
Very much aware of the speed of the modern game, the hugely impressive levels of fitness boasted by present-day players and the attractiveness of gaelic football these days to the average spectator, Colm is nonetheless convinced that the game could be improved even further.
'The game needs a new system of controlling the game whereby the referee is assisted a lot more by the linesman. Refereeing standards nowadays leaves a lot to be desired and it is one of the biggest problems about the GAA at the moment and it needs to be tackled sooner rather than later,'
And on the question of tackling, Colm reckons that coaches coach players how to tackle a player properly and how to hit his opponent in a fair but determined manner.
A man who reckons that Frank McGuigan was easily the best footballer he has ever seen playing during his time. He also admired the determination and never say die spirit of Patsy Forbes.
Take from Hogan Stand magazine
24th January, 1997 Tweet
