Football kept Noel O'Leary on the right road after tragedies
TG4 16-03-23@ 21.30 Laochra Gael(Noel O'Leary). for TV Watch Weekend
Noel O’Leary has spoken frankly about how his life could have taken a turn for the worse but for football after experiencing a series of personal tragedies.
In an evocative 'Laochra Gael' to be screened on TG4 next Thursday, Cork’s 2010 All-Ireland SFC winner speaks openly about the losses of his brother Ciarán and cousin Mark’s suicides and a tragic quad bike accident that befell his friend Benny between January 1999 and December 2000.
The Cill na Martra man has never shied away from speaking about their deaths, speaking to Kieran Shannon in a interview in 2007. In next week’s programme, he discusses the impact their losses had on him.
“At all their funerals, I left everything out there. I cried my eyes out for three or four days. I cried at the removal, I cried at the funeral and looking back at it I’m glad I did. I held nothing in.
“You kind of make the three guys your driving force, really. Then you start thinking about your parents, 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 kinda go left or you can go right and left could be the good road and right could be the bad road. We took the right, as the fella says, and the pinnacle of that was football. That’s what slowly but surely brought us around.
“The biggest moment in my life, really, was getting through what happened outside of football. For me, it was a left or right decision and I can assure you there were plenty of people that could have led me a different direction.”
Synonymous with the Cork-Kerry rivalry of the late 2000s when he regularly clashed with Paul Galvin, O’Leary admits his sending-off in the 2009 Munster semi-final replay was a turning point for him to improve his discipline even though Cork won the game.
“I think he might have thrown an elbow and then I probably threw something back and got caught bad actually – he (referee Pat McEnaney) was looking straight at it. When he ran over that I knew my show was done.
“I think the only saving grace was walking off and I said, ‘jees, whatever about getting sent off, he’s after getting away with it’ and the next thing I heard the roar from the crowd and he (Galvin) was given a red card as well. Not that it made it any better, but it took the sting out of it a small bit anyway.
“I was extremely disappointed with myself, to be honest. That was a moment where I said, ‘This thing has to stop’.
The 40-year-old maintains Cork were the architects of their own downfall in the 2009 All-Ireland final, not Kerry.
“With 12 or 13 minutes to go, I remember Jack O’Connor up and down the sideline and he panicking. He knew Cork were coming.
“People say Kerry beat Cork – Cork beat Cork that day. I’ll hold that statement to the day I die. It wasn’t Kerry beat Cork, it was Cork beat Cork.”
O’Leary fondly recalls how he tried to keep secret his call-up to the senior Cork panel from his father Donal, who passed away in October 2020.
“My father had a huge issue with not being mature enough for senior football. So I said, ‘The best thing I’ll do is tear into training on Wednesday night and say nothing at home’. I trained with them for a good three or four weeks and we had Limerick in the league. He (Larry Tompkins) brought me on with 10 minutes to go.”
At home, Donal and O’Leary’s mother Máire were listening to the commentary on the game on local radio when they reported their son had scored a point for Cork. “You’d think I’d be delighted with that but the first thing that hit me in the head was, ‘Jesus, the paper tomorrow morning, if there is something about it himself will see it and there’ll be murder.’”
