Former Celtic and Ireland manager Martin O'Neill has revealed one of his dreams would have been to win an all-Ireland medal playing Gaelic football for Derry.

The Kilrea man was speaking on the 'Stick to Football' podcast with Roy Keane, Gary Neville, Ian Wright and Jill Scott as he reflected on his time in soccer as a European Cup winning player under Brian Clough, and his successful, decades-long career as a manager.

But O'Neill, whose father was a founding member of the GAA club in Kilrea and whose brothers won Ulster medals playing Gaelic football for Derry, said if he hadn't been successful in soccer he'd have continued play for his home county and hoped to win an All-Ireland.

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The former St Columb's College and St Malachy's College pupil also spoke warmly about his appearance in an all-Ireland colleges championship with the latter schoolboy's team.

Asked by the host, former Manchester United and England player Gary Neville, if he would have continued playing GAA if he "hadn't made it as a footballer", O'Neill said: "I probably would have done, yeah, yeah. I would have liked to have won an All-Ireland medal with County Derry.

"I played at Croke Park. I played minor football. I played under-18s for Derry for a couple of years. We had a colleges final for a couple of years called the Hogan Cup and the college I went to, St Malachy's, reached the all-Ireland colleges final."

Pointing to Cork man Roy Keane, he said: "We got beaten by a team near Roy, from down in Cork."

Keane, smiling, pumped his fist in a gesture of victory as the Derry man continued: "It was an under-18 competition but down in Coláiste Chríost Ri the players were 33 at the time. Four boys came on with big beards, honestly, under 18?"

It isn't the first time O'Neill has opened up on his love of Gaelic games. In 2008, he visited Áras an Uachtaráin to speak to the then President Mary McAleese and a group of students on the subject of Irish identity.

He recounted his journey, at the age of six, to Croke Park for the All-Ireland final between Derry and Dublin.

"In 1958, Derry got to the All-Ireland final. My brother [Leo] was 18 and playing and my mother decided to take me to the game. We headed off from Kilrea on a six hour journey to Croke Park."

He continued: "I’ve never forgotten it, I was six years of age at the time. Within 15 or 20 miles we had picked up these two women. They were magnificent singers and each county that we passed they would sing the appropriate song. We also stopped off for mass.

"This journey was everything I had hoped it to be. It was a definite extension of my Irishness. It’s what I wanted to be, it’s what I felt I was."

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