‘I’M PROUD OF WHAT I ACHIEVED’
GARY O’NEIL hopes his career isn’t over. But listening to the 36-year-old reflect on 20 years at the summit of English football, his words read like a fond farewell.
“I was never strong. I was never quick. Even when I broke into the first team, I was tiny. So to play top-level football for so long - that’s something I’m extremely proud of.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to play again. But if my career ended now and I never set foot on a pitch again, I’d have no regrets. I’ve had a hell of a run.”
That run started as a 16-yearold under Tony Pulis at Pompey in the late 90s, an era when Beats were provided by drummers and tweeting was the province of birds.
“The game has changed completely,” laughs O’Neil. “Especially in the changing room. It’s a bit like when you get on a train and everyone is looking at their phones.
“There’s a lot of headphones. Slightly more individuality. That reflects society, and the way technology has moved things on. The feeling of camaraderie, of a bunch of mates playing football… that’s not what it was.
“And in terms of discipline, it’s a different world. When I was coming through, the dressing room was full of senior pros. Tough, hardened characters.
“We had guys like Shaun Derry, Justin Edinburgh, Steve Stone. Teddy Sheringham came later on, and Paul Merson. Linvoy Primus.
“If you spoke to young players now the way some of them spoke to me, you would probably get charged with bullying. That’s been taken out of the game, and probably for the better.
“But I learned some fantastic lessons on the training ground. If I wasn’t putting the work in or doing things to my best, I would be told in no uncertain terms that it was unacceptable.”
Lessons were learned on the pitch, too, most notably at the hands of legendary Arsenal and France midfielder Patrick Vieira.
Lessons
O’Neil was 21 and embarking on his first Premier League season when any aspirations of playing international football were doused with an icy bucket of perspective.
“The first time I played against Vieira was amazing,” he recalls. “It was the 2004-05 season, I think, just after they’d gone however many games unbeaten.
“He was so physical. So strong. Really, really quick. He had this massive stride that meant he covered the ground incredibly quickly.
“That was probably my toughest 90 minutes. It was one of the only games when I thought ‘Wow, there’s no way I can get to that level. That is so far away from what I am’.
“I was a young kid playing the Premier League and doing OK. So it was a real eye-opener in terms of the standards you have to hit if you want to play at the very top.”
O’Neil never would play for England, nor represent an elite club. But a mixture of hard work, intelligence and the ability to maximise his talent would see him spend ten seasons in the top flight and win promotion from the Championship with three different clubs. Along the way he worked under Harry Redknapp, Allardyce and - most influentially - current England boss Gareth Southgate, who was just 36 and a managerial rookie when O’Neil joined Middlesbrough in 2007.
“The Boro job came quite early for him, and it didn’t go well in the end,” says O’Neill, who has scored 34 goals in 472 career appearances.
“But you could tell that he had the right ideas. He was very good in how he treated the players, and we were fairly similar in terms of our outlook. We got along very well.
“The way he’s united the England team and the fans doesn’t surprise me at all. He’s just a really genuine guy.
“Even now, I’ll still ask him the odd question about what route I should take and how a certain approach works for him. And he always, always gets back.
“You’d think ‘He’s the England manager, he’s flat out, the last thing he needs is a semi-retired footballer who’s just left Bolton asking him for coaching advice’.
“But I’ve never texted him and not received a reply, no matter what role he’s been doing or how busy he’s been. He always tries to help, which isn’t the case with everybody. That just shows you what kind of man he is.”
Last season, O’Neil showed his character too. As Bolton disintegrated, players and staff went unpaid for months at a time. Financial neglect doomed Phil Parkinson’s Trotters to relegation from the outset, but O’Neil’s efforts to keep Bolton in the Championship eventually saw him awarded the club’s player of the year award. “It was the craziest season I’ve ever experienced,” adds O’Neil, who joined Bolton after two injury-hit seaSam sons at Bristol City. “It was just never-ending. Literally every day we walked into the changing room, there was a meeting. We were getting paid. Then we weren’t getting paid. Then we getting some of it. That was before a ball was even kicked.
Difficult
“It was very hard to know whether people were lying. Or whether they believed what they were saying and they’d been lied to. And you never got the full story. I’m just glad Bolton survived because we saw at Bury that it can easily go the other way.
“It was a very difficult situation but I still take great pride in the way the lads never gave up. We got relegated and we didn’t have enough to stay up, but it wasn’t through a lack of effort.
“I can only speak for myself, but there’s always personal pride. Last game, away at Forest. There’s nothing on it. We’ve not been paid. We’ve got no idea whether we will get paid.
“But when the manager says ‘Who wants to play?’ everyone does. Me, I want to go out at the City Ground and show all the players and all the fans that
Gary O’Neil can still play football.
“I wanted to show I was the best player on the pitch and that never changed regardless of what happened off the pitch.”
And it still hasn’t. Parkinson’s departure in August robbed O’Neil of the chance to remain at Bolton, and an injury whilst on trial has now condemned him to the wilderness.
A Pro-Licenced coach, he is currently helping old pal Derry manage the Under-23s at Crystal Palace and has also found work with talkSPORT and Sky.
“I’ve known I wanted to be a manager since I was 26,” he explains. “My coaching badges are all done. It’s literally just getting some experiences. And if that’s the way forward for me, I’ll be very happy.
“But I had a good season last year. I played 30-odd games, covered more ground than anybody else at the club. Before this summer, I felt I had another three years left in me. So I’m not ready to quit yet. Whether it’s later this season or I go on trial in the summer, I want to prove I can still play.”
If my career ended now and I never set foot on a pitch again, I’d have no regrets. I’ve hell had a of a run Gary O’Neil