O'Nien wanted to get to know Le Bris and wanted to know what his new boss made of him as a player.
"I went straight to his office and I went, 'how do you think I am as a player? What do I need to improve?'," recalls the defender.
"That was our first interaction. He pulled up his computer and showed me 50 clips and was like, 'this is good, this is good, this needs work.' And I was like, 'we're going to go really, really well.'"
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O'Nien wasn't wrong. Less than two years later and the aim on Wearside is not getting out of the Championship but qualifying for Europe.
And it wasn't just O'Nien that was struck by that first meeting. So too was Le Bris, who was instantly impressed by the defender's mentality, professionalism, intensity and willingness to take risks.
O'Nien says: "You can't improve as an individual in any work unless you're willing to look at the mistakes. That's where the feedback lies. When you whip one into the top corner, there's still feedback there but there's nowhere near as much as making the mistake.
"As bad as it sounds, you need to fail in football as many times as you can when you're young. And you need to fail now because if you're not failing, you're not really trying anything.
"The funny thing was, I stopped making mistakes for a number of years because I started playing everything safe, so there's a fine balance where mistakes are going to hurt your game. Then the ego is going to stop you from looking at them.
"What you tend to do then is just give the ball to the person next to you and never try the daunting thing or the thing that the game needs. If you give it to the person next to you, you're safe. And you give it to someone else to make a mistake. But that's also no way to play.
"I played safe for a couple of years, never had fun, never tried anything. And that's why I have coaches where I now look within, I now look to coaches and ask, did I make the right decision? No, you played it safe.
"You have to go out and fail. You don't intend to fail, but you need to go out there and try things. And if you're not making at least one mistake a game, you're probably [not doing it right]."
O'Nien has done plenty right in his eight years on Wearside, which is why he's been able to rack up more than 300 appearances and establish himself as a modern day club legend.
He told BBC Radio Newcastle: "When you join a club, you can never predict how it's going to go and how long you're going to stay in one place for. I think it's quite rare in this modern day for players to stay at clubs for as long as I have. I'm very grateful for the trust the club has put on me.
"I think I'm in the 300 or something class. There's been some good ones, some bad ones and everything in between. Since my first one, I've been improving. And if I get to 350 and beyond, I've got to make sure that I keep improving so that I'm not the same player that I am right now."