Footballer to ‘recover fully’ from US attack

A TALENTED intercounty footballer who suffered head injuries in an attack in Boston is sitting up in bed talking and looking forward to coming home, according to his wife.

Valerie O’Neill told the Irish Examiner yesterday that doctors had delivered a very good prognosis on her husband, Damien, who was injured during the attack in Boston last Thursday.

The couple and their four boys, who range in age from two to 12, were in the US city preparing to attend the wedding of her brother, Declan O’Shea.

However, the attack on Damien – who captained Bantry Blues to two county senior football titles in 1995 and 1998 – forced the family to miss the wedding.

Valerie said she had kept a beside vigil at Tufts New England Medical Centre in Boston since the attack.

She said it was not true her 37-year-old husband had been in a coma.

“Damien was never in a coma or on a life support machine. He was heavily sedated because of his head injury,” she said.

“The first thing he said to me was that he wanted to get out of here. He’s talking all the time now; he’s back to the same old Damien.”

Doctors have told him he will make a full recovery.

“We hope we’ll be able to get him back home within the next two weeks,” Valerie said.

Valerie and her children are staying in Boston with her sister, Marie Fahy.

She spends most of the day at the hospital along with her brother Donal O’Shea, uncle Barry O’Neill and mother-in-law Kim O’Neill.

“I want to thank all the people in Bantry for the support they have given us. I have had lots of text messages from people wishing Damien well and I hope he’ll be back in Bantry shortly to see his many friends,” Valerie said.

Damien trained as a carpenter and honed his talents in Boston for a couple of years before coming back to Bantry where he formed the successful development company Willowford Developments.

The nephew of Declan Barron, who won an All-Ireland senior football medal with Cork in 1973, Damien still plays football with Bantry Blues.