Reliable Rebel O’Neill ready to turn the corner

There’s a school of thought suggesting Cork’s Shane O’Neill is wasted at number two. Michael Moynihan canvassed opinion from others who’ve played corner-back for the Rebels.

“YOU COULD play him anywhere in the backs,” says John Considine.

“I’d go further – I think he’d do in midfield.

“He has pace, power and he’s a leader – he captained the minors in 2004 when they beat Tipp in the Munster final, the day Shane Long the soccer player lined out for Tipperary.

“Every player has weaknesses, but it’d be difficult to pick out a weakness in his game. He’s exceptional.”

Considine is talking about Shane O’Neill, the man who’ll wear the number two jersey for Cork tomorrow against Waterford.

The player himself is looking forward to the Munster final, though he’s conscious that as a defender, he’ll have his hands full against the Déise attack.

“If you look at any of the league games, there’s serious competition among counties,” says O’Neill.

“Waterford are a serious goalscoring team, so are Tipperary and Kilkenny. We face teams like that all the time and Waterford are no different.

“They’re a serious team. They’ve been incredibly consistent, churning out wins when they didn’t seem likely, and they always seem to perform. We know what’s ahead of us in the full-back line, but we’re looking forward to it.

“The most important thing is the result. If you’d told me before the Tipp game, for instance, ‘ye’ll win by a point but your man will be top scorer’, I’d have taken that straightaway.

“We played well against Tipp and limited them, but it was also a wet day. It was a hard day for forwards, so we weren’t getting carried away.”

It wouldn’t be in O’Neill’s nature to get carried away, according to Wayne Sherlock, who can recall the newcomer’s arrival on the Cork panel five years ago.

“When he first came on the panel back in 2005, he impressed everyone with his attitude and his commitment.

“You’d have known immediately, watching him in training, that he was going to be a top-class player, and he’s certainly shown that in the last couple of years.”

Coming through the underage ranks, O’Neill was a swashbuckling half-back, bursting forward onto the loose balls around the middle of the field. Is he wasted in the last line of defence?

“It depends on what you have, if you know what I mean,” says Considine.

“When Ronan Curran eventually moves on he might move out to centre-back, but for a lot of players it can be more difficult mentally to adjust to playing in the full-back line, to moving back the field rather than out the field. There’s a different mindset involved back there.”

Sherlock won All-Irelands at wing-back and corner-back. He specifies the differences.

“The obvious one is that if you’re a wing-back and you make a mistake then the full-backs can cover for you, but if you make that mistake in the full-back line, then you’re in trouble,” he says.

“Generally speaking the way the game is played nowadays a back has to be able to play anywhere – it’s so open now compared to even five or six years ago, when it was more or less 15 against 15 in their positions.

“The full-back line can end up so far out the field that you’d want to be able to play half-back anyway. That’d suit a good hurler like Shane.”

“Even in football terms it pays to be safe in the full-back line,” says Considine. “The likes of Mike McCarthy and Seamus Moynihan were very good out the field for Kerry but they were moved to full-back to give the team a strong foundation.

“In hurling a lot of fellas would find it difficult to move back to the full-back line. Cork are lucky in that Shane and Eoin Cadogan could come out to play wing and centre-back, but I don’t know if John Gardiner and Ronan Curran would want to move to the full-back line.

“That’s a big positive for Shane – he doesn’t seem to be fazed no matter where he lines out. You could argue he’s wasted at corner-back, but it’s a tough role to fill now.”

John Horgan, who starred with Cork on their three-in-a-row side, is another admirer of O’Neill’s ability to make himself at home anywhere on the field.

“He’s an outstanding player, he seems well able for any position and he has the pace to support other players when they have the ball.

“But Cork shouldn’t forget the ball is there to be driven as well. When we played we wouldn’t have had the same style that Cork had for a while, the running game with the corner-backs all over the field, but it’s not too different from our time nowadays.’’

Sherlock, meanwhile, sees O’Neill’s ease in dealing with the open spaces as a particular benefit given this weekend’s opponents.

“The way Waterford play in particular, with forwards switching around and coming out the field, you’d want to be able for playing in different parts of the defence.’’

Considine agrees, though he points to a big difference with his own playing days two decades ago.

“There is that change from my day, when you might have the odd time you followed your man out if he was playing as a third midfielder, for instance. That was rare enough, though.

“Certainly in my time playing I doubt I ever went past the halfway line in a championship game, but Shane and the modern corner-backs often end up in the other half of the field.’’

Horgan also notes the importance of the full-back line’s alignment.

“I like the fact that he has a good understanding with the other players in the full-back line. That’s vital if you want to succeed in that part of the field.

“For instance, when we played you had the likes of myself, Martin O’Doherty, Pat McDonnell and Brian Murphy in the full-back line, and we never played in a straight line across the pitch. If you played all in a line then one ball might beat the three of ye, so we had a player in front and the others covered behind.

“We never sat down and discussed it, it just happened.”