Niall O'Leary: push for places in Cork team driving everyone on

Since the Clare game in the Munster SHC of 2024, Niall O’Leary has been an automatic selection at number 2 for Cork when available.

The Castlelyons man has turned in a series of consistent displays in the full-back line, playing every minute as Cork won last year’s league title and earning an All-Star nomination that he was unlucky not to receive the year before.

In Sunday’s win over Kilkenny, O’Leary was again to the fore in the Rebels’ defence – but he says that, such is the level of competition for places, nobody can take their place in Ben O’Connor’s starting 15 for granted.

Cork’s depth was shown by the fact that the side that won in UPMC Nowlan Park had nine changes from the side that had beaten Tipperary in the previous outing but with no discernible weaking of the team.

“We were even talking about it coming down,” O’Leary says, “looking at the fellas that are out injured at the moment, and looking at the panel that went out there on Sunday, the strength in depth in the panel there at the moment is huge.

“It's only driving the training even better again, which is great to see.

“You can see Ben’s picking the panel on what's going well in training and stuff.

“Fellas are really on their toes every day going out, so it's a great thing to have.

“Hopefully that will stand to us going forward.”

Cork led throughout on Sunday, but that didn’t necessarily mean they had things all their own way. A six-point half-time lead was whittled down to two at one stage in the second half but they held out.

“Yeah, it was close,” O’Leary says.

“The wind, I don’t know, it was kind of a strange one, it was kind of swirling a small bit – it was kind of a direct one going straight down the middle.
“But again, look, both teams kind of figured it out at times there, trying to work through the lines against it and then going a bit longer at times.

“We knew at half-time that we could do better too as well. We discussed a few things – we probably weren't using the ball as well as we could have, so we knew we were going to do a bit of a dogfight there in the second half, trying to work it through.

“But look, we pride ourselves on working through the lines too, so it was great to see we could play it both ways.”

Helping them stay in front were a debut goal for Killeagh’s Barry Walsh and then, after he had been substituted by his namesake Alan, the Kanturk man netted with his first possession.

Familiar with the pair from having to mark them in training, O’Leary was full of praise.

“Yeah, I'm delighted for the two of them,” he says.

“They’re flying in training, to be fair to them. They’re great young fellas and they really have a good insight into how to play at inter-county level too, they’ve played under-age with Cork.

“They’re flying and hopefully they can go on and have a good year.”

The win leaves Cork well-placed, but with a tricky top-of-the-table clash against Limerick to come on Saturday night.

“You can see Limerick are flying it as well in the league,” O’Leary says.

“They're going really well, so we're going down there with a tough game ahead of us.

“Hopefully if we can get in a good performance, things might go our way as well.”