John Mulhall: One cool Cat lapping up life

Unique is one word to describe John Mulhall. Mercurial is another. One of Kilkenny’s great hurling mysteries explains to John Fogarty how he did it his way...

John Mulhall can’t remember if the training match in Nowlan Park was before the 2010 or 2011 All-Ireland final but the noise has never left him. His ash meeting Brian Cody’s forehead. Or, should that be, Brian Cody’s forehead meeting his ash.

It was an accident, of course. Mulhall was lining out at centre-forward when he struck a ball but on the upswing caught Cody, who was refereeing. He didn’t stick around to check on the welfare of his manager. “It was right at the start of the training match. I would have hit him as hard as I could with the hurl and just ran on after the ball because it was better not to stand next to him at that, I’d say.”