IT MIGHT BE a short journey from home in Castlelyons to his work as a PE and History teacher at St Colman’s College in Fermoy, but Cork hurler Niall O’Leary will often allow his mind to draft back through the decades and centuries, to when these roads and lanes were hot with action and anger.
Back in the summer of 1889, four local brothers by the name of Kent were organising a boycott against the general manager of a local estate, Robert Browne, who was representing the wishes of land owner, Belfast-based absentee landlord Orr McCausland.
They threatened Browne and taunted him. They put the hard word on those who worked for Browne. They stopped an elderly female employee, Mary Murphy, from buying a pig at a local fair.
Constantly, they maintained a low-level aggression against Browne as reprisal for how their family’s land had been taken from them.
They established the Castlelyons branch of the Irish Volunteers, the first teetotal branch in Ireland. Thomas Kent was arrested with Terence MacSwiney for making speeches of a seditious nature.
In the round-up after the 1916 Easter Rising, police surrounded their home and ordered the surrender of all in the house. Thomas, David, William and Richard replied there would be no such surrender.
Their 80-year-old mother Mary filled their guns with ammunition and urged encouragement throughout a three-hour gun battle, until they had fired every bullet.
They had killed Head Constable Rowe. Thomas Kent was found guilty and executed by firing squad at Cork Barracks – the only reprisal for the Rising outside Dublin. The main railway station in Cork is named after him.
So occasionally when the weather is fine, Niall O’Leary will bring his students out to these places. He will walk around the sites and explain what happened on the days loud with war and the splits in families with the War of Independence and the Civil War.
“It’s a great way to get students that I teach, to have something for them to become interested in locally,” he explains.
“That local connection is very powerful.
“It is something I have been interested in all my life. I suppose there is such a rich history around it in my area was what brought me on. I had another neighbour down the road that was involved with the IRA in that time period. He was involved in a couple of ambushes around the area as well.”
Some just don’t get or see any relevance. But O’Leary feels it when he plays hurling for Cork. How the sport and the players were treated a century ago by Black and Tans.
“I suppose Cork has had a huge impact on it. It’s something we don’t really realise it at times, but the connection is there.”
O’Leary is one of those hurlers that bubbled through in the Covid years. The school he teaches in now is one that he played for in a Harty Cup final. From there, he went to UCC on a scholarship but before that he managed to squeeze out a couple of county titles playing for divisional team Imokilly against Blackrock and Midleton in successive finals.
The representative system helped him, right up to the point where Castlelyons got on a run last season that only finished at Croke Park when they were beaten by Kilkenny’s Thomastown in the intermediate club final. They are a senior outfit now.
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He carried his club form back into the corner-back position for Cork this year, further establishing his credentials after captaining the side in Sean O’Donoghue’s absence.
In this endlessly entertaining Munster championship, Cork have been a riot of colour and excitement. Losing their two openers to Waterford and Clare left them down a dark place until they exploded with a home win over Limerick. Eight days later they riddled the carcass of Tipperary hurling in Semple Stadium.
After brushing off a feisty enough Offaly last weekend, they have Dublin in Semple Stadium on Saturday at the ungodly time of 1.15pm in the All-Ireland quarter-final.
There is a sense now that the group is ready for whatever comes their way.
In the 2021 final against Limerick, they weren’t. Limerick recorded the highest ever tally in a final, 3-32 in front of a Covid-restricted half attendance of 40,000.
O’Leary suffered more than most. He was on Peter Casey who lit it up the stage with five points before he suffered an injury and had to be withdrawn. O’Leary was taken off after 47 minutes.
In the days after, the stats were compiled. One that originated from the Limerick camp was astonishing; Limerick made 60 tackles to Cork’s 20 in the first half.
Swamped. In every way, O’Leary says.
“For us as a group, the majority of us hadn’t been in Croke Park on All-Ireland final day. I think you have to look at it and say the occasion probably did get to a few of us,” he says.
“They (Limerick) were, back then, intimidating to a lot of us. We have completely changed, we have come to terms with the way they play, we have done a lot of work ourselves in regards gym work which has helped massively over the last two or three years.
“But looking back to 2021, it is a tough one to look back on. Myself, I never try to watch games back, really. But they did attack us that day, they came at us and it didn’t go well for us.”
Under Pat Ryan, the group feels different. There’s a philosophical way about Ryan that has taken the pressure off the players. How else could they have turned their season around in the middle of a scorching Munster series?
“Pat is brilliant that way,” says O’Leary.
“I suppose in one way it is a very competitive environment in the training with us. But again, it’s a very relaxed environment as well. With everything, it is perspective. And it is a game at the end of the day.
“We have to enjoy it and hopefully perform. As a county, as a team, that’s what we look at really.
“Pat has been through enough in life really to know exactly that it isn’t going to kill us or break us in that way. He’s brilliant at that. That environment he has brought in has really come across the last few games when you look at how calm and relaxed fellas have been in games when things have gone against us, I think that has really shown in the group.”
The famed performance consultant Gary Keegan has held connections to Cork hurling going back to 2016 and 2017, but he accepted Kieran Kingston’s invitation a few years back to come back in to help, and Ryan has retained him.
After the first two lost games Keegan’s work was required.
“Both the team and the individuals have taken great benefit from taking a fella like that,” says O’Leary.
“He is such a good character and he creates a bond within the group. Very professional, the work that he does with us seems to get through easily as well. Look, I know you would be doing work with different psychologists and that, but the way he words things, it brings it down to our own level and we can understand it a lot easier.”
The win over Limerick ticked a few boxes. It could be done. The celebrations on the pitch later, the fine night it was, the coming of age feel for the stadium, much-derided as the project and naming rights fiasco was, it all melted away in the moment.
“The relief in Pairc Ui Chaoimh – Supervalu Pairc Ui Chaoimh, even! – The belief you get from beating the All-Ireland champions, and the reaction from such a crowd as we had that day…” recalls O’Leary.
“(Actually) I wouldn’t say it was a relief. I’d say it is more of a confidence-builder for us as a group, to be honest with you.
“It’s something that we have lacked in the last couple of years. It’s really hit home that there is huge belief in the group that any day we can go out, we will bring consistency to the performance and challenge any team.
“That’s something that straight after the game you really have to soak in and enjoy.
“For lads that played in Munster finals in 2017, 2018, they have witnessed that and played a part in it. But there are others who have bever been a part of it so it is something you have to relax and soak it in. Again, give it 24 hours and you are brought back down to earth again for another game the following week.
“But you do have to soak it in, it’s something that you never know what you might feel it again.”
Maybe sooner than he says.
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