O’Leary galvanised for battle

RTÉ don’t operate a version of Sky’s player cam but they would be well advised to stretch their limited purse strings for Sunday’s All-Ireland final at Croke Park.

The championship decider is littered with fertile sub-plots, head-to-heads that could flower into majestic showpieces in their own right. One in particular exudes a sniff of sulphur.

Sparks tend to fly when Cork’s Noel O’Leary and Kerry’s Paul Galvin occupy the same few square metres. It is akin to dropping two alpha male elephants into the one herd.

Galvin’s rap sheet contains such indiscretions as his 2006 dismissal for an altercation with Armagh’s water carrier John Toal and last season’s suspension after slapping out at Paddy Russell’s book.

O’Leary almost missed the 2007 All-Ireland final after swinging a punch at Meath’s Graham Geraghty, having already served a ban earlier that summer for kicking out at an opponent.

The victim? Paul Galvin.

Both men were sent to the line earlier this summer after an off-the-ball altercation in the opening minutes of the Munster semi-final replay at Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

Six days earlier, the stage seemed set for similar fireworks when O’Leary replaced Ger Spillane and was dispatched to mark Galvin, who was already on a yellow card. Thousands of minds must have been thinking identical thoughts at the time but both men managed to stay around long enough to hear the final whistle on that occasion.

Galvin has, the one faux pas apart, been on his best behaviour this year. So much so that he could well propel himself into the running for Player of the Year on Sunday.

O’Leary’s mission — should he be chosen to accept it — will be to do all he can to negate the influence Galvin invariably has when the Kerry engine is purring nicely.

“It’s always a bit interesting, I suppose,” says O’Leary of their meetings, “but it is a new ball game. Paul is a fantastic footballer and, whoever is going to be on him, we are all going to have to be on our ‘A’ game the next day.”

It’s an issue he clearly isn’t willing to delve into too deeply. A follow-on enquiry about his experiences beside the Finuge man is lost in a fog of clichés.

O’Leary may have the reputation for being a hot-head but he has been knocking around with the Cork seniors since 2003 and no player lasts that long at that level if all they offer is fire.

He was criticised for giving away ten metres for Bryan Sheehan’s equalising free in the drawn provincial final but he kept Galvin scoreless that day while picking off a point himself.

That said, O’Leary and everyone else on this Cork team will be judged not on what they achieve against Kerry in Killarney or Cork but in Croke Park. They know it too.

Like his team-mates, O’Leary prefers not to dwell on the events of September 2007 but, when he does, he remembers a team defeated by nerves and uncharacteristic errors.

It isn’t the only itch Cork have to scratch from their previous engagements against Kerry at headquarters and the mental residue from those defeats will surely drift into this weekend.

O’Leary’s response to that is to talk of this game as he would any other, as though he always had a feeling Kerry would negotiate a path through the thicket of qualifiers. O’Leary claims he never allowed himself believe that Jack O’Connor’s side would fall, even when they were limping past Longford, Sligo and Antrim in mid-summer.

Undoubtedly, Kerry have changed. And for the better. But how, exactly?

“There’s only two words that you could say there and that’s ‘Croke Park’.

“They love it and there’s no two ways about it. It energises them. They love playing up there.

“They seem a fresher team as well. They seemed a bit dead on their feet against us in Cork but seem to have freshened up and seem to have their hunger back.”

Cork too have evolved.

They are bigger and unquestionably a better side than the one which folded so meekly two years ago. New players and a new management structure have revived their spirits. Some of their mental baggage with Kerry and Croke Park was shed in the semi-final when they did what Kerry have failed to do this decade by defeating Tyrone in the championship.

That surely must have made it all the sweeter.

“To be honest, no,” said O’Leary. “It’s fair enough to beat Tyrone but, if we don’t beat Kerry it won’t mean anything. We can talk about the Tyrone game after if we get the right result the next day. This Tyrone thing has gone. It’s about Kerry now.”

Paul Galvin and all.