Mark Coleman: 'There’s nothing wrong with the game of hurling, it’s constantly evolving'

Mark Coleman first caught the eye at national level in 2017, but Blarney GAA club already knew they had a gem

Mark Coleman: There’s nothing wrong with the game of hurling, it’s constantly evolving. Picture: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

Mark Coleman is mulling over the novelty of an inter-county season beginning in May.

“Usually in December and January you’d get a good bit of training done, and between playing in the Fitzgibbon or the Munster League you’d have a good bit of hurling done at this stage.

“So it’s strange, not really knowing where you’re at and then getting plunged into high quality games.

“It’s a positive because you’re into May and only starting the year, so maybe there’s a bit of freshness and a bit of hunger that you mightn’t always have at this time of the season.”

Swings and roundabouts.

The Cork defender shows a trademark sidestep when recent debates on the direction of hurling are mentioned.

“Look, we just focus on ourselves and getting ourselves right. There’s nothing wrong with the game of hurling, it’s constantly evolving — evolving every week at this stage, almost — and no matter how we play, there’ll be another team coming along to throw a spanner in the works so we’ll have to switch it up again.

“And that’s the same for all teams, everyone is trying to evolve and counteract their opponents. We wouldn’t be listening to too much of the noise going on outside, and I’d say other teams are much the same.

If you start paying attention to that kind of thing you’re not going to do much to improve your own performance.

Coleman first caught the eye at national level in 2017, but Blarney GAA club already knew they had a gem. Chairman Jim McCarthy cites the All-Ireland senior hurling C final Coleman dominated in 2016, hitting nine points from midfield.

“His father Ray and all the Colemans are deeply involved in the club,” says McCarthy.

“Mark’s mother Anne is chair of the camogie club — in fact, she is the camogie club — and she runs the club shop, she’s phenomenal. They’re that type of family. They’re legends in the club but they don’t draw attention to themselves, they just get on with it.

If you were looking for a family that’s done more for Blarney, you couldn’t go past the Colemans.

No surprise, then, to hear Coleman himself praise clubmate Shane Barrett, a new arrival in the Cork senior camp: “Everyone’s delighted for Shane, having two Blarney lads on the team is great. We did well last year in the championship, we have a young team and we’re going in the right direction — we’d be happy we got up senior when we did (winning Premier IHC last year) and we’d hope to give it a good rattle.”

McCarthy points out that last year’s split season gave Blarney access to Coleman for a long spell: “Since he went in with Cork he’s been in and out of the club squad, so last year was different.

“I think he enjoyed that as well, playing with the lads he grew up with. Funnily enough, it probably brought home to people in Blarney how good he was — people in the club know that, obviously, but the live streaming of games brought that right into other people’s homes.

“I think it showed them how good he is at club level — particularly the county final, when he scored 0-14.”

University hurling was another staging post in Coleman’s development. On his way to a B.Comm (“Applying for jobs now,” he laughs) he picked up two Fitzgibbon Cup medals.

“It was huge,” he says.

“It’s a different style of hurling — when you’re playing inter-county teams are so organised, there’s so much time for training, whereas with the Fitzgibbon it’s more off the cuff, raw hurling.

“And it’s such high quality, every team is nearly a full inter-county squad so it was huge for me.”

UCC GAA officer John Granger says: “I thought college grew on him, partly because he was on a two-in-a-row Fitzgibbon Cup team, and partly, maybe, because playing in the Fitzgibbon was a release from the pressure of playing intercounty.

There’s a photograph of the UCC team after winning one of the Fitzgibbon titles, and you can see Coleman with a huge smile on his face. He’s like a kid who woke up on Christmas Day and got a bicycle.

“His expression is one of real contentment — ‘I’ve won a Fitzgibbon, I’ve ticked that box’.” Many observers will remember Coleman’s stunning sideline cut to win the Fitzgibbon Cup semi-final in 2020 against DCU.

“The game was level, time almost up, when we won that sideline,” says Granger. “I watched Mark and he just walked down to take the sideline, placed the ball — and looked around just in case there was anyone available for a short one — but when he saw there wasn’t he turned back to the ball.

“How he put the ball over the bar, in those conditions, at the end of the game — that was incredible skill.

“He’s quiet, but he knows his own mind. With players who are finishing up their degrees I’d always ask them if they’re coming back for post-graduate studies, to see if they want some guidance about what to do.

“And some fellas might say ‘yeah, I might’, but with Mark it was no, straight out. He knew what he wanted to do and he had his mind made up.”

In the short term that’s Westmeath this weekend. “We’d be happy enough with how we’ve performed so far, particularly after just a couple of weeks of training,” says Coleman before name-checking Donal O’Grady, a new arrival in the backroom team.

“Donal’s a fresh voice and he brings new ideas, and we all enjoy working with him — he has a different way of looking at the game.

He’s not coming in to change everything from top to bottom, he comes in with small ideas we can learn from, and that’s a great help.