GAA:THERE ARE a couple of things that are best known about Noel O'Leary. Firstly his tinderbox temperament, which marks him apart from the Cork caricature of colourless individuals curiously lacking in passion. His lapses of discipline are almost legendary – including getting himself yellow-carded one season in every match of a league campaign and thumping Graham Geraghty in an All-Ireland semi-final, only surviving to play in the final because the referee unbelievably refused to cite him.
Maybe his deliverance was helped by the publication on the August morning of that Meath match in 2007 of a haunting interview with Kieran Shannon in the Sunday Tribune. In it O’Leary spoke affectingly about the deaths by suicide of his brother and cousin. For anyone reading it, the thought of his missing an All-Ireland final on top of all this other suffering left even the most ardent disciplinarian conflicted.
Football might have helped him through these difficulties but it has also brought its own setbacks. Next Sunday he plays in a third All-Ireland final in four seasons and still awaits his first medal. For five successive seasons Cork exited the national stage by being pushed into the wings by neighbours Kerry, whom they had defeated in Munster in three of those seasons.
This time the challenge is different: a team with whom they have no senior history apart from a semi-final defeat in 1994 long before even the veterans of the current team had begun their careers.
It hasn’t been the most impressive of seasons for Cork but there was a doggedness about their semi-final dispatch of Dublin, trailing for so long before sliding into the lead for last couple of minutes. “There was huge pressure coming into the home straight. There were times when you’d be feeling, ‘will we pull out of this?’ At the same time if you had it in your head that you wouldn’t pull out of it, you just wouldn’t. Everyone still believed we could and the experience did tell in the end.”
Surrounded by reporters he knocks off the answers to familiar questions with the practised ease he presumably brings to lopping off diseased branches in his day job as a tree surgeon. The mood sharpens for the only time during a routine press night interview when the question of his team’s character is raised even though it’s in the positive context of the Dublin recovery.
“That aspect of it was satisfying. There has been a lot thrown at this team in regard to character but – Down guys would say this as well – you guys don’t see what happens on the training ground. You’ve guys then make certain comments and they haven’t a clue what they’re talking about. This goes for every team. Guys in media circles don’t know us. There’s great character in this team and it was great to pull it out of the fire against Dublin but we always knew we had that character.”
He isn’t flustered by enquiries concerning why this season has been his less prominent disciplinary profile. “I suppose football has changed and you’re not going to get away with shenanigans you did before . . . I’d like to think I still play tough football because you need that side of it as well.”
There are, rightly or wrongly and despite O’Leary’s insistence to the contrary, reservations about the team’s ability to deliver even in the absence of their perennial tormentors, Kerry. If 2007 was a learning experience, last year when Cork appeared to hold all of the cards raised awkward questions. “An All-Ireland final is an All-Ireland final regardless of who you’re playing,” he says. “People are looking too much into the Kerry factor. To call a spade a spade Kerry performed on the day and we didn’t. We’re playing Down now and they annihilated Kerry and are playing superb football. We have to be at our very best to beat them.
“No matter who loses an All-Ireland, you’re going to be down over it. It’s a tough thing. We always felt we could get back this year and we kept it together, got back as a group three or four weeks afterwards. That was a huge help.”
Beneath the interview-speak there is one core authenticity and that is the possibility of succeeding in a quest that has by acquired an almost epic status. “It would mean everything to us,” he says of the prospect of taking home the Sam Maguire. “We’ve been playing this game nearly all our lives and your dream is to win an All-Ireland, your ultimate goal.”
Noel O'Leary
Age: 28 Club: Cill na Martra
Position: Wing back
Occupation: Tree surgeon Honours: Munster SFC (2006, '08 and '09), NFL (Division Two 2009, Division One 2010), All-Ireland JFC (2001), Munster JFC (2001), All-Ireland MFC (2000), Munster MFC (2000)
