OUR BOYS WILL GIVE THEIR COL

COLLIE O’NEILL claims ‘it would be a big lie’ if he burdened his UCD players with unrealistic goals this season.

Last year’s First Division champions are already being tipped as relegation fodder along with Finn Harps.

And they received a blow yesterday when O’neill revealed that defender Evan Osam (below) will miss the season after rupturing his Achilles in training.

The manager said: “It’s very hard to set an expectation on the season. Last year was easy. We knew all the teams we played against, we knew all the players, knew all the grounds we were going to.

“So we set the expectation that, ‘We can win this’ even though everyone else was tipping us to finish seventh.

“This year, we don’t know all the players, don’t know all the teams. Just four of our players have Premier Division minutes under their belt.

“We don’t have Premier Division experience and there are too many unknowns to set a true expectation.”

O’neill insists he is not playing mind games, adding: “That’s me being realistic and I said it to the group at a meeting 10 days ago. It’d be a big lie of me to walk into our dressing room and say, ‘This is our expectation for the year’.

“To set an expectation would be a false expectation and I refuse to do that.”

Ahead of the opener against Derry, O’neill believes UCD can still pack a punch.

He said: “What people don’t realise is the ability and skill of these young players. If they perform on a consistent level, the ability is there and I think we can turn some heads.”

But Osam’s injury is a devastating blow. O’neill said: “He’s a top class player and is a big loss to how we defend and play but we have to deal with it.”