CLICKING KING

Star man Mick had a keen eye for capturing the moment around the fields of Ireland

- BY DEREK FOLEY

THE funeral of our photographer Mick O'Neill, tragically killed in a road traffic accident last weekend, takes place this morning in Swords.

Mick had travelled all over the world with his job, often on risky assignments, sending home pictures from places as far flung as Peru, Lebanon, Netherlands, Mauritius, India, Dubai and Spain.

But it is also fair to say many of our sports-mad readers had a brush with his lens at times as he covered, by choice, a lot of domestic sport.

Myself and Mick's longstanding joke about some of the more obscure games we covered was that 'we were not so much outstanding in our own fields but out standing in someone else's...

It never ceased to amaze me either that he was on first-name terms with so many. He had privately organised/ sent on pics to players, clubs, charities and they remembered him.

I've done every sport imaginable with Mick as well as news stories encompassing everything from astronauts to the Holocaust, from Ballyragget to Ballymun, Ploughing Championships to Galway Races.