The St Vincent’s clubman from the northside of the city is a 2010 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship winner.

He soldiered with the likes of Anthony Lynch, Graham Canty and Nicholas Murphy until the Leesiders eventually reached the promised land five years ago, overcoming Down in a September showpiece.

However, in March of 2011, O’Shea, probably secretly, had had enough of playing second fiddle in the Rebels’ goalkeeping order of merit and left the panel.

Effectively, he should have been appreciated more by Conor Counihan and the rest of the management at the time as he has always been a prodigious goalkeeping talent, even if he would not say so himself.

Additionally, his mind was drawn towards the potential of his own business, Paddy O’Shea Electrical.

‘Real life’ issues aside from Gaelic football took an inevitable stranglehold of his time, and O’Shea rolled with the employment punches.

Yet, with his business beginning to thrive, manager Brian Cuthbert sounded out O’Shea for an inter-county return at an opportune time.

Following his lengthy spell away from Cork duty, O’Shea weighed up the pros and cons.

As a matter of fact, “the cons out-weighed the pros”.

Still, the allure of being part of the Leesiders’ brigade for occasions like the Munster SFC final in Killarney on Sunday were too magnetic to ignore, as O’Shea explains.

Yet, as he illustrates, combining his work and football roles is far from easy, a common issue for players, particularly at the highest levels.

“Typically I would get up at 7.30am and be out the door for work at 8am,” O’Shea states. “With the work I do, it’s both domestic and commercial so I’m doing a different job every single day.

“So it’s not as if I’m on a site for months on end leading to me having a proper daily routine.

“I can be pulled from pillar to post day-to-day.

“I would normally only finish up work a half-an-hour before training, arrive at the session, grab the bag from the van and get going.

“You get home then around 9.30pm each night, so it’s tough.

“I’m pushing on in years too so the day after you’re always trying to get the body recovered again as well to prepare for the next session.

“And I’m sure life is like that for many GAA players all over the country.

“I used to wind-up Alan Quirke about pushing on and that, but I understand where he used to be coming from now!”

Nevertheless, it is a complaint, if you could even call it that, O’Shea doesn't mind having, especially with the likes of a provincial final against Kerry on the horizon.

“Of course, after it all, it’s still an honour to wear the Cork jersey so that is why you drive on no matter how tricky balancing everything can be on a given day or time-frame.

“It’s funny though, when Brian (Cuthbert) rang me to get back involved it was a nice surprise. I was delighted.

“But I still had to weigh up the pros and cons the cons out-weighed the pros, actually.

“The reason I walked away first-day four years ago was because of the need to focus on my job.

“I’m self-employed now, thankfully business is great too, but I had to assess whether or not I could take the extra pressure of playing with Cork as well again.

“I was apprehensive because playing football at this level is like having another job.

“I was gobsmacked to have gotten the call but there is no way, even with the cons greater than all of the pros that you can turn down the opportunity.

“There is no doubt about it though you’re essentially working two full-time jobs.”

O’Shea has an invaluable amount of experience as well - a commodity Cuthbert was conscious of as the boss sought out winners to complement the youth in his squad.

With such experience in his locker O’Shea would never be one for buying into the criticisms that have followed Cork around throughout the years.

Furthermore, he says none of the panel took a blind bit of notice of Tomás Ó Sé’s musings recently, either.

“When we looked back on it, after the initial disappointment of the final itself, we actually had a really good league campaign,” O’Shea stated.

“To finish the division on top and for some of the lads who hadn’t played in Croke Park before to perform as they did against Donegal was a real plus for me.

“It’s frustrating then when we get criticised excessively but it would have frustrated me much more when I was younger, originally on the panel.

“We won the All-Ireland in 2010 and had listened to people question us beforehand.

“Then after we won it they said: ‘They should have won more’ - so some people are never happy.

“We take no notice of criticisms from Tomás (Ó Sé) or anybody else for that matter.

“We only focus on ourselves,” he added.