Noel O'Leary has 'huge respect' for arch rival Paul Galvin after many wars

O’Leary and Galvin regularly marked each other when the Cork-Kerry rivalry was arguably at its peak from 2005-10

Noel O'Leary has moved to set the record straight on his arch rival Paul Galvin, a man who he says he has “huge respect” for.

O’Leary and Galvin regularly marked each other when the Cork-Kerry rivalry was arguably at its peak from 2005-10.

The counties met at least twice in each Championship campaign in that period and 14 times in all, including the All-Ireland finals of 2007 and ‘09, both of which Kerry won.

The pair regularly butted heads over that series of games, culminating in both of them being sent off in the 2009 Munster semi-final replay, won comprehensively by Cork.

Galvin ended that season as Footballer of the Year after Kerry avenged their defeat in the All-Ireland final, though when O’Leary finally won his Celtic Cross the following year, he received a text from his nemesis which read: “Congrats – now would you please retire and leave me alone!”

It suggested that, for all their history, there was a level of warmth between the pair which was evident again when the former Cork wing-back spoke to Galvin’s ex-teammate Tomas O Se via Benetti Menswear’s Instagram account.

He recalled his first encounter with Galvin, way back when the Finuge man was playing for UCC, and how there there was a “tension during the game”.

“I said in my own mind anyway, 'I have no doubt that if we meet down the road there'll be some tango between the two of us',” O’Leary commented. “And sure lo and behold, that's the way it panned out.

“To be fair to the man, I'd have great respect for him. Obviously a brilliant footballer, a brilliant footballer and certainly a driving force on your team at the time.

“Over the years I've heard an awful lot of things, false things really, this kind of sledging that goes on, I've heard numerous things from people that he said certain things to me during the game, personal things, I can categorically state, for both of us to be fair, it goes both ways, that he never opened his mouth to me and I was the same to him.

“I'd show huge respect to a guy that just puts it all out there and gets on with it. To be fair, the majority of ye were the same. I won't say all of ye, but the majority of ye were the same.

“But it's totally different now. Sure what goes on now is unbelievable.

“I know we had our tussles or whatever but I'd have huge respect for him as a footballer. Certainly a lot of what went on was blown out of proportion a small bit.”

Reflecting on the 2010 campaign, O’Leary admitted they were gunning for Kerry in the final only for them to be dumped out at the quarter-final stage by Down, who Cork edged by a point in the decider.

“I suppose deep down we probably wanted Kerry in that All-Ireland final in 2010 and Kerry were knocked out and had problems down there, missing a few players, and you know when ye were knocked out I felt it was ours to lose then. We felt an awful lot of pressure.

“All our games after that, we were just about getting over the line. It was more fecking (being) nervous and just the weight of expectation then was huge.

“To get there was just relief. But obviously it was definitely one of the best days of my life, no doubt.”

That was reflected, O’Leary explained, in the celebrations that followed.

“I'm not sure what the maddest thing was but I'll always remember, we went on the team holiday and I was never a man that would put on an awful lot of weight.

“I don't know what we were doing or where we were but we said we'd weigh ourselves on holidays, God almighty tonight! I was about a stone and a half overweight.

“I swear to Christ I nearly collapsed. It obviously told that we were partying fairly hard anyway, that's a guarantee.”

While paying tribute to Larry Tompkins - “a ferocious man to to train” - who introduced him to the Cork set-up in late 2000 when O’Leary was fresh out of the minor grade, the Cill na Martra man said that Billy Morgan’s second coming as manager laid the foundations for the success that followed under Conor Counihan in 2010.

“I’ve never come across a guy as passionate, as infectious. The team in the late noughties, his fingerprints were really all over that as well.

“We really needed that man to come in at that time. Even though we didn’t have a lot of success, he instilled an awful lot of belief in us, just a great, great guy. Jesus, a great guy. A mighty man.”