Cool Coulter ready to let loose

NOT so long ago, Benny Coulter made his way down to Dublin to collect a player of the month award.

His trip down the M1 was occasioned by a superb performance against Donegal in the opening round of the Ulster championship, one in which he bent the game to his will the longer it went on.

He should have been basking in the glow of such a performance but, instead, his mind was a jumble of negative thoughts about the game he had adorned with such grace for the bones of 10 years.

“When I quit, that will be it,” he said.

“I will watch it on TV. Games are so bad nowadays that I don’t know why you would pay in to go watch matches way down the country when that’s what you are getting.

“Look at our teams in ‘91 and ‘94. They were all about all-out attack. I would love to have been playing then, but that’s the way the game has gone and we’re going to have to stick with it. Even ourselves this year, we are starting to play with eight or nine defenders.”

His mood was probably little better a few weeks later when Down were squeezed to death by a machine-like Tyrone team in the provincial semi-final after a sublime opening quarter of attacking football from James McCartan’s men.

And yet, here Down are, 70 minutes away from a first All-Ireland appearance since men like McCartan, Mickey Linden and Greg Blaney swept broad and beautiful brushstrokes across the landscape 16 years ago.

Feel better about things now, Benny?

“Oh, definitely. At the start of the year I didn’t think we were going to be in this position and I am going to be honest about it.

“James is a great manager and we were hoping to make great strides and we did.

“The way football was going at the time (of his earlier interview) there was a lot of negativity in the game but it is has opened up a bit now maybe. Kerry just seemed to play 15 on 15 and that was great for us. We were happy enough with that.”

He doesn’t see Kieran McGeeney’s Kildare following the same roadmap this weekend, not with McGeeney’s fellow Armagh man Aidan O’Rourke standing beside him all year, whispering in Geezer’s ear.

“Aidan O’Rourke has worked with Queen’s and he has them set up in a certain style that will not let you play and if they win the game they will be happy enough. They will do whatever it takes to win the game.”

Coulter has seen enough of McGeeney to know that. The pair met rarely on the field for their counties but the Kildare manager was captain of an Irish International Rules side containing Coulter in 2005.

“He was a great man, a great leader,’’ Coulter recalls. “He is down to earth and a bit of crack about him but he is very driven and the Kildare lads will be ready to come at us.”

Rightly or wrongly, Kildare have been compared to the Tyrone and Armagh sides of recent years when those counties were operating at their peak and Coulter has certainly detected an air of relentlessness in their approach.

The glow of victory over Kerry was still warm when he switched on the TV 24 hours later to watch Kildare’s last-eight clash with Meath and he was struck by the winners’ ability to keep their heads despite an awful start.

“They looked good. They never panic and they are strong on the ball. John Doyle is a great player. They started off slowly, 1-3 to a point down, and that was what impressed me most about them – they never panicked. They stuck at it. They obviously have a game plan and that’s what they do.”

Coulter’s own situation is more fluid. In that game against Donegal in May he was back helping out his defence as often as he was claiming or setting up scores and it remains to be seen whether he will start in the half-forward line or closer to goal.

He doesn’t mind, one way or another. He will be expected to have a major say, either way, but the days when he was expected to shoulder most of the burden for raising flags is at an end. Or so he would have it.

“When you look at it over the years, Danny (Hughes) has done a lot of the scoring too. You have Marty (Clarke) back now, John (Clarke) too, Paul McCumiskey is starting to come into how own and Mark Poland too.

“There is a good spread of scorers and you have a few boys in the half-back line who play up front with their clubs that can knock the ball over the bar, and then there is Ambrose (Rogers) as well.”

Rogers, as we know now, will almost certainly sit this one out.

Coulter should give him something pleasing to watch.