O’Neill back in harness after more injury woe

IT was meant to be a spring that provided a series of rigorous inter-county tests and offered the perfect platform to build for championship football, but instead Stephen O’Neill found himself in a familiar mode of having to rehabilitate.

Injuries are no rarity for the Tyrone attacker and after a prosperous Dr McKenna Cup campaign, disaster struck in the final of the Ulster pre-season competition on a bitterly cold night in Enniskillen at the end of January when O’Neill was stretchered off with a dislocated elbow.

“I can remember the ball was down on the ground and I went to pick it up,” he recalls. “I missed it, and just as I landed I got the bang and felt the pain. I knew straight away that it was out when I felt it, and it was a sore one. It was definitely frustrating but these things happen. You just have to get on with it and work with the physios.”