HE'S helped himself to 4-28 in competitive fare since the Allianz league began but it's still only a matter of months since Ronan O'Neill seriously considered if he was good enough to play for Tyrone.
A lack of game time throughout 2015 frustrated the Omagh attacker who started just one of Tyrone's seven Championship games and, towards the end of the summer, was consistently one of the last players to be brought on.
It meant that as everyone else in Tyrone reflected on a breakthrough season of sorts after reaching the All-Ireland semi-finals, O'Neill was left looking inwards and wondering what exactly he was doing wrong.
The 23-year old concluded that he simply hadn't been working hard enough, hadn't been putting the hard yards in to make it as a Tyrone first teamer.
"I had to think long and hard if I wanted to be with Tyrone in 2016 and would I be good enough to be there," said O'Neill. "I made a decision that I'd give it a right good lash in the off season and then one thing fell after another with the McKenna Cup and in terms of playing a lot of games. A run of games brings confidence and I think confidence is key really."
Asked if he ever approached Mickey Harte with his concerns, O'Neill shook his head.
"No, just the family, and a few good friends that I would trust," he continued. "It depends where he (the manager) sees you and what you can offer him. We always have meetings at the end of the year and Mickey was looking for me to push on this year and be a key part of the team, as he does for everyone. I took that on board. Last year other lads getting on in front of me was very frustrating and I took it by myself to push on."
O'Neill was a strong underage player and helped Tyrone to All-Ireland minor success in 2010. Since then he's made 13 Championship appearances for the seniors but most have been as a substitute. He had a cruciate knee ligament setback in early 2012 and felt he'd found a kindred spirit when he read this week that Bernard Brogan had taken the circuitous route to stardom after a difficult early few years with Dublin.
"I only came into Tyrone in 2012 and I did my cruciate and it took a long hard journey to get back," said O'Neill. "The game probably evolved around then also and Donegal were putting in serious effort into the game and their preparations. It probably took me two or three years to grasp that, the professionalism of GAA at the moment."
If a nagging suspicion existed after last year's defeat to Kerry that Tyrone lacked a vital spark in attack, to get them over the line against the very top teams, O'Neill's rise to prominence couldn't have come at a better time.
He capped a decent league campaign with 1-3 against Cavan at Croke Park in the final before blasting 2-2 against Derry in their Championship opener.
"Listen, all I've done is have a good league campaign and the Derry game obviously went well for us all but there's a lot more to come and an awful lot more to do," said O'Neill, who reflected on the double digits win over Derry.
"We knew going up to Derry that we'd already played them four times in a matter of months and that it was going to be another tough battle. We're happy enough that our game plan worked and we got goals quite early and that sort of settled any nerves.
"We slackened off in the second-half but that's maybe natural enough when you're 10 or 11 points ahead. Derry had said all year that the Championship was the one that was going to count for them but our aim from the start of the year was May 22nd too. So we're delighted to have got through it."
Ronan O'Neill was speaking at the launch of AIB's sponsorship of the All-Ireland senior football championship.
