by David Kenny
And then? Well then when they were inside, Morgan closed the door and proceeded to give his wing back, as O’Leary so eloquently puts it, ‘an unmerciful fecking’. In front of everyone. He shakes his head and grimaces bashfully at the memory, thought and accusation. Too fiery and volatile – even by Morgan standards. ‘But he was dead right too,’ says O’Leary. ‘I was a bit mad that night. A rush of blood to the head.’
Admit it. It’s how you know him, perceive him. There mightn’t be a better attacking wing-back left in this year’s Championship or anyone on the Cork team more adept at playing that ball into Michael Cussen, but to you, he’s that serial yellow-carder who keeps getting into scrapes. He’ll probably take up Geraghty today and, well, it’s hard to see both of them lasting the distance. But, as Dan might say, if you don’t know him, don’t judge him.
He’s from a place called Cill na Martra, the second smallest parish in the biggest county in Ireland, a few miles outside Macroom, off the road to Ballyvourney, but as a kid he developed a passion for West Cork football and West Cork footballers more than fifty miles down the road. There was Castlehaven and Tompkins and Cahalane. And even though they were junior, there was Urhan and Ciaran O’Sullivan too. He remembers going with his father Donal as a twelve-year-old to see them play Midleton in a county junior championship replay in 1992 in Ballingeary.
‘I’ll never forget it. The first day Ciaran was awesome. The second day he was having a brilliant game again when one of the Midleton lads turned round and made shit of his nose. Ciaran was down for three or four minutes, blood pissing out of his nose. Next thing, he gets up, the ball comes in and Ciaran grabs it underneath his own goalpost, goes straight up the centre of the field and shoes the ball straight on the 45 and splits the posts.
‘My father turns round to me and says, “That man will be playing for Cork next year.”’ And at that, his son vowed that’s how he’d play for Cork too. Like Cahalane, like Ciaran. Blood and bandages, boy.
And that’s how he played for them as a minor. With passion. Raw passion at times, but passion, and when the Cork senior hurlers were presented with their 2000 Munster medals the same night as O’Leary and his colleagues were presented with their All-Ireland minor football medals, Diarmuid O’Sullivan, a two-time All Star even then, made a point of going over to O’Leary to tell him how much he loved the way he played the game.
A year later they were teammates winning an All-Ireland junior medal together, and a year later, on the senior panel, winning a Munster football championship together. O’Leary had to wait until he was twenty-one to break onto the starting fifteen though. When he did, he did with intent.
‘I thought, “Feck it, a tougher attitude to this set-up would be no harm at all. We’ll try not to take any prisoners if we can.” I suppose I went a bit bald-headed into it though. Did a lot of stupid things.’
Whatever about doing anything stupid, O’Leary managed to do something unique in that 2003 league campaign, picking up a yellow card in each of Cork’s seven league games, and just for good measure, picking up two in the last game against Tyrone. But over the years he’d like to think he’s tempered down that temper. He’s no longer the wild buck of 2003, though, he’ll admit, some sort of red mist does seem to descend upon him when he encounters that green and gold. And on days like that, he’s reminded it’s only a game, that there’s more to life. And he’ll agree. Yeah, it’s a game, there’s more to life, but what you must understand it’s that game that has helped him get through the life he’s had.
The first to go was Mark. They were cousins but more like twins; the same age, the same humour who’d ‘more or less lived with each other; him living up in our place or me down in theirs’. Then, in January of 1999, Mark and his girlfriend broke up and all of a sudden he was dead. Suicide.
‘It was an awful shock at the time. Because nothing like that had ever happened to us before. But that was my first year with the Cork minors and the football was a great thing to have. It gave me something to turn back to.’
O’Leary and Cork would win that year’s Munster final, inspired by a magical display from another dynamic wing back called Tom Kenny, but a few weeks before the following year’s Munster final, tragedy struck again. This time it was Benny, his best friend.
‘Benny,’ he smiles, ‘Benny was a gas man. Strange, he had no interest in football but we had a bit of an old business going there. We bought a quad-bike between us, spraying weeds and spreading manure on farms for farmers. A couple of weeks before we played Kerry, there were about thirteen or fourteen of us out the back at home. Benny was spinning around on the bike. And feck it, it was a case of the two of us getting too used to that bike; we’d wear no helmets or anything like that, you know. And sure, whatever way he went across this little slope in the field, didn’t the bike turn and fall on top of him.
‘At the start we were saying to ourselves, “This man is going to hop up now any second,” because he was a bit of a joker, like. But we went over, and Jesus, when we looked at him he had gone blue in the face. Myself and my brother Ciaran tried to clear his mouth but it was no good.’ By the time the ambulance had hit Macroom, Benny was gone.
Again, football offered some measure of solace and that summer Cork went on to claim Munster and then the All Ireland. O’Leary’s eyes light up at the memory of it and old teammates. Some of them you’ve heard of: Masters and McMahon, the latter of whom will play with him in Croke Park today; Conrad Murphy, who was the best of the lot of them; Kieran ‘Hero’ Murphy from Erin’s Own. But then there were others who you mightn’t have heard of. Paul Deane, Dinny O’Hare; ‘Maybe not the most skilful, but hard men and great lads as well.’ Only in the last year or two with the seniors, has he experienced a team chemistry and bond like the boys of that summer enjoyed. It was the time of their lives and should have been the year of their lives, but before 2000 was out it had been the worst of O’Leary’s.
He’ll never forget the game that was on the box that day: Glenflesk and Nemo in the Munster club final, and himself and the father watching Moynihan and Johnny Crowley trying to win it nearly on their own. But as the day and game went on, his mother was becoming increasingly anxious. Ciaran, Noel’s seventeen-year-old brother, had yet to come home. There was no word from him or of him. Noel and his younger brother, Donal Óg, told her to relax, reminding her that it wouldn’t be the first time he’d have stayed over at a friend’s. After the game was over though, there was still no word. They’d phoned Ciaran’s girlfriend who he’d visited the previous night and she’d said he’d gone home.
‘The father was saying then, “God, maybe he was drunk coming home and fell somewhere. Donal Óg, go into the shed and get our wellingtons and we’ll go to the fields and look for him.” Donal Óg went into the shed only to find Ciaran already there. Same story as Mark. Seventeen. Just finished with the girlfriend. Gone.
‘Definitely what happened to Benny was a big part of it. Ciaran was there when it happened and he used to get upset about it. He’d always be on about it at home. But in saying that, you wouldn’t have taken much notice of it. I mean, it was natural enough he was upset about it.
‘I think it was a pure spur-of-the-moment thing. It and drink. In most of these cases that’s what it is; a spur-of-the-moment decision brought on by the drink. Looking back, Ciaran wouldn’t have been the best to take drink. He was only seventeen, a bit of a wild lad but a good lad, but you could see that he used to get upset after drink.’
That’s why he’d tell anyone: know the people who don’t react well to it. Be there to tell them the one that’s one too many, especially when that one might be the first. Be there to say hang on, everybody hurts, but it passes. It’s maybe not the normal message or cause advocated by a GAA player, but O’Leary feels strongly about this. So do his younger brothers, who hardly drink at all.
‘A lot of people mightn’t like talking about this, shy away from talking about it, but it’s happening every day in other homes. People mi
ght learn from it. I have no problem talking whatsoever about it. Or Benny or Mark. It was an unbelievable run for us at the time, but it happened. It’s a big part of who I am.’
There’s little O’Leary isn’t upfront about. At times he might sound all bashful like Páidi Ó Sé just like he plays like a young Páidi Ó Sé but the ‘Yerrah’ response is not for him. There is a refreshing honesty as well as affability about him. In the tree surgery business he set up a few years ago, beating around the bush is kept to a minimum. It’s the same in conversation. He cuts through the bullshit.
The Cork under-21 team management during what he now calls the lost years, for instance. ‘It was the worst set-up I’ve ever seen. Selectors turning up late; poor locations, no tactics before games, no buzz in the camp. For them three years we didn’t even threaten to win an All Ireland when we had the players to do it. In 2003 we ended up losing to Waterford. Rightly so. That was the game they parachuted Setanta [Ó hAilpín] and [John] Gardiner in for before the [senior All-Ireland] hurling final. No disrespect to the two lads but they never trained with us that year while they were taking the places of fellas who’d trained all year. Sure that’s not a team.’
He’ll accept his discipline could be better too. Okay, he doesn’t think he should have been suspended for the Louth game this year, because as he showed the guys in Croke Park, that time in the Munster final Paul Galvin was holding and twisting his ankle ...
‘I’m not saying he was doing it intentionally’ ... and O’Leary was only trying to wriggle his way free. Then you push him on it.
‘That was all though, Noel. You were just trying to get him off you?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Genuinely, Noel.’
He smiles. ‘Well, maybe there was a slight bit of a kick-out too.’
He’ll be straight up about the support of the current senior team as well, or lack of it, to be precise. Last week Waterford lost their fourth All-Ireland semi-final in the Justin McCarthy era and a country, let alone, county, nearly went into mourning.
Lose today and the Cork footballers will likewise have lost four semi-finals in six years, and yet the masses on Leeside will be indifferent to their plight. O’Leary is close friends with some of the hurlers, especially O’Sullivan, but as much as he wishes them well, at times he can’t help but be envious of them.
‘It’s unbelievably disappointing, our support, even if we’re long over it now. The hurlers get caught in a sticky situation and are down three points and the crowd roars them on, which is a huge help to a team. We go three down and people just turn their asses to us. That’s when we need them.
There’s absolutely no doubt about it, if we win this All Ireland, it’ll be for this panel of players and management team. I honestly think there’s only about two or three hundred genuine Cork football supporters out there.’
He’d love to win it for Morgan (‘His head for the game is unbelievable. And his passion. Even watching him giving speeches and seeing the veins start to pop; you’d be proud to play for a man like him’). For old teammates like Ciaran O’Sullivan who was probably as good as Moynihan but was never seen as such because he never won that Celtic Cross. But as he says, mostly for the men around him each night in training. That’s what it’s about.
Right now, they’re near and yet so far. They’re only one game away from a final but the way they’ve been playing they seem a lot further away than that. Maybe the hurling snobs have a point; the team hasn’t played with any flair; it’s yet to cast off its inhibitions.
He’ll admit that. But the 2000 minors should have lost in the first round to Clare. They went on and won the All Ireland. That team and this team have a lot in common. This crowd could go all the way too.
‘Look, there’s no doubt that if we play like we did the last day against Sligo there’s no hope for us against Meath. They’re playing a nice brand of football and seem to be able to find space all the time, while we seem to be getting clogged up an awful lot. But we know the football we’re capable of and the football we’ve played. It’s going to come out some time again, hopefully on Sunday. [James] Masters is going to be a loss alright but the man himself, pure gentleman, said it openly in the papers that his injury gives lads like [Daniel] Goulding a chance and they might burn up Croke Park.’
He’ll feel for Masters today. This is about the only year O’Leary himself has been free of injury. A week after his championship debut against Limerick in 2003, his old buddy Diarmuid O’Sullivan gave him a clatter in a county championship game. O’Leary played on but he had taken the Ciaran O’Sullivan spirit to extremes ... his ribs had been cracked, something that kept him out of the qualifier defeat to Roscommon. The following year in Killarney his medial ligament gave way; the following year against the old enemy in Croke Park, he and Conor McCarthy collided and he had to be taken off, and then last year, a viral infection from a very costly half hour of sunbathing in La Manga kept him out of the starting line-up for the summer.
But he kept coming back, kept bouncing back up, kept walking on.
He knows no other way.
Upfront fury
Frustrated by failure to play to his potential, Owen Mulligan almost quit the Tyrone panel earlier this summer, but his zealous need to succeed drove him on.
25 September 2005
‘Against Monaghan I saw Martin Penrose warming up on the sideline. In years gone by, I’d be, “That’s for some other boy.” That day I was looking over, saying, “That’s for me.” It was too. I looked over again against Dublin. Peter was warming up. I said, “He’s coming on for me.” It was actually for Ryan Mellon but then I saw a few more boys warming up. I said, “I need to do something very fast here or I’m going off. I’m definitely going off.”
‘So I did that.’
THAT.
You know that well by now; the TV guys rightly show it every chance they can. The turn, the first dummy, the second, the rocket. You know that it was the moment that turned and ignited his season, Tyrone’s season, the season itself. That it must have been some weight off his shoulders. Just how big a relief, you ‘have no f**king idea’.
You don’t know that only two weeks earlier he told Mickey Harte he was on the verge of quitting the panel. That if that ball had sailed past Stephen Cluxton’s post, not just Tyrone’s 2005 All-Ireland dream would have been over but possibly his inter-county career. That during that Monaghan game, Heather Mulligan had to turn round to another woman in the crowd and say, ‘For the last half-hour I’ve sat here and heard you abuse Owen Mulligan. Owen Mulligan is my son.’
You don’t know – not even Owen Mulligan himself knows – that one of his sisters avoided games this summer because of the vitriol directed at her brother during the Ulster final. You don’t know that, instead of just pumping his fist after that goal, he wanted to ‘rip off [his] top and stick the fngers up at all the wankers that had been mouthing’.
Or, at least you didn’t know.
Not to worry. Let’s put you in those shoes. You are Owen Mulligan. And first, it’s the distant past. Your first hero is a local hero and future friend, Stephen Conway. You go to the 1989 Ulster final with your father Eugene and Scotchy points a last-minute 45 to force a replay. You later pluck up the nerve to go into the club dressing room in Cookstown and ask Stephen to sign your uncle’s Silk Cut cigarette box.
After Scotchy comes another hero. Peter Canavan. Soon he’s a local one too, teaching you leisure and tourism in Holy Trinity. Well, maybe he doesn’t teach you much because you don’t listen much but you’re all ears when it comes to football. He tells you not to be holding onto that ball in midfield, to hit this pass and that. You try his way and find it always comes off. You look over at him, he doesn’t even look at you and you think to yourself, ‘Jesus, you’re right.’
You win a schools All Ireland under him but miss another with the county vocational team after breaking your arm. You cry your eyes out, fearing you’ll never play in Croke Park. It’s
actually a blessing in disguise. Because you’ve become a bit hesitant going up for the high ball, you’re moved into the forwards. You win an All-Ireland final in Croke Park the next year. You also learn from it.
Shortly after that minor final win, the club seniors are training. You go drinking instead. That drives some players mad, then the management too. But you say, ‘F**k youse so.’ It will be one of the biggest regrets of your life. You miss a holiday to Canada. The boys come home, all saying, ‘Mugsy, you should have seen that trip.’
After that you swear that never again must your natural confidence cross over into arrogance.
The silverware and lessons keep coming. In 2001 you win your second under-21 All-Ireland medal and your first senior Ulster one but about your only contribution to that latter triumph is scoring a goal off Ger Reid fifteen seconds into your debut; the rest of that summer you spend ‘getting involved with men pulling your jersey and starting fights’. In 2002 you’re even more peripheral. It’s not just your form, it’s your attitude. ‘Though it’s a bad thing to say, on the bench you kind of lose interest and start thinking, “I don’t have to do that extra run, I don’t have to train.” ’ Then Mickey Harte is appointed senior coach. You know he values tackling and work rate so you tackle and work harder than ever before.
Soon the whole country is talking about the master and student combo of yourself and Canavan and the bleach you’ve in your hair.
You first tried it when you were a minor for a bet. This year it’s for a woman, your granny; when you had allowed your hair go its natural brown, she said, ‘Will you get that hair back to the way it was? I can’t make you out anymore on the TV.’ Now everyone can’t but notice you, the way you’re playing.
The next thing it’s September and Canavan is telling you to practice your frees because he mightn’t be playing. You do, every day on the club pitch. Canavan actually plays but goes off again and though you’ve been foolishly exchanging pushes with Francie Bellew all day, you sense it’s time you take a bit of responsibility. You land two massive frees.
