Tracking Canadian footballers in Europe during the summer months is generally a lonely furrow to plough. But considering the recent performances of Canada's various national teams at various tournaments, checking up on some of the players not normally associated with said teams can actually bestow a sense of tranquility. Focusing the mind's eye away from images of players literally tripping over the ball in the French penalty area to the offbeat names of Scandinavian football clubs, like Jippo, Odd Grenland and Honka.
And at a time when Canada supporters are yearning for the faintest hope to latch onto, why not grasp desperately at Riley O'Neill?
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Some readers may already know the name. (Some definitely do, because Long Balls is ripping much of this information directly from the Voyageurs online forum.) But to the uninitiated, O'Neill is a 26-year-old striker from Vancouver who has appeared for both the Canadian U17 and U20 teams while attending the University of Kentucky.
A broken neck suffered in 2002 derailed his playing career somewhat, although according to Wikipedia he "rejoined the national team the following season." Despite the extremely limited amount of information available online regarding that incident, Long Balls will go ahead and describe it as "pretty fucking impressive," since a broken neck tends to derail a person's ability to walk, nevermind his soccer career.
After toiling for a few seasons in the lower German divisions, Riley currently finds himself with the Finnish club team MyPa, which astute readers will recognize as the former home of another Canadian striker, Tosaint Ricketts.
O'Neill has played 170 minutes in six substitute appearances for MyPa thus far in the young Finnish season. A fan blog had the following to say about his role in the match against JJK Jyväskylä on Monday. (With translating help from Google and the Canadian supporters forum.)
The embodiment of the team rise could be pinpointed on Riley O'Neill who brought "rytinää" and motion to the MyPa attack. As long as he can stay in shape, MyPa have a top class striker in their hands
And there it is. In a week where Canada supporters are engulfed in much needed soul-searching regarding the state of the game in this country, someone deep in the Finnish countryside emerged on the Internet to suddenly inform everyone that a forgotten and uncapped member of our national-team eligible player pool is in fact a "top class striker." I'll be darned.
As an old friend once assured Long Balls that "the world turns on hope." Now, that's not to say that for long-and-still suffering Canada fans the world should suddenly turn on Riley O'Neill, but after a month in which almost everything that could go wrong did, you take the small bits of happy where and when you find them.