Quiet man of Cork football Noel O’Leary to be focus of Laochra Gael on TG4

Between January 1999 and December 2000 he lost his brother, Ciarán, and a cousin, Mark, who lost their lives to suicide, and a best friend, Benny, who died in a quad bike accident

“At all their funerals, I left everything out there,” said Noel. “I cried my eyes out for three or four days.

“You kind of make the three guys your driving force really, then you start thinking about your parents and what they gave to you growing up and what they’ve done for you.

“All that definitely drove me going forward alright.

“You’re at a ‘Y’ in the road you can kind of go left or you can go right and left could be the good road and the right could be the bad road .

“So we gook the right as the fellow says and the pinnacle of that was football.

“That’s what slowly and surely brought us around.”

While a quiet man who let his football do the talking, Noel’s clashes with Kerry star Paul Galvin were legendary. Both players got sent off in the 2009 Munster semi-final after an infamous incident involving some provocation and a right hook.

“I think he might have thrown an elbow and then I probably threw something back and got caught bad actually - the referee Pat McEneaney was looking straight at it and when he ran over, I knew my show was done.

That Paul Galvin also got red-carded took a ‘bit of the sting out of it’ but the incident was a matter of bitter disappointment for the Gaeltacht player.

“That was a moment where I said, this thing has to stop.”

Later that year Cork were undone by Kerry in the All Ireland final but the next year brought redemption when O’Leary secured his one and only senior All Ireland when Cork defeated Down.