John Mullane believes that Waterford have learned the importance of playing right to the final whistle, reports Ian O’Riordan
SOME BOOKS you should burn after reading. Some DVDs you should burn before viewing. John Mullane has two of those – last year’s All-Ireland hurling final and this year’s All-Ireland club hurling final. Between playing with Waterford and playing with his club De La Salle, Mullane lost by a combined total of 45 points.
It could have been enough to convince him to walk away from the game he loves but, typically, he keeps on keeping on. In his last match he hit just a single point but it may well have been the most important of his career – the point that finally stopped Galway in their tracks and sent Waterford into this Sunday’s All-Ireland hurling semi-final against Kilkenny.
“That point was such a relief, more than anything,” says Mullane. “Relief for myself, because it was the first score I happened to get on the day. And relief that it happened to be the winner too. It’s experience as well, I suppose. It was the league final against Kilkenny a few years ago. I wasn’t getting on the scoreboard and was missing quite a number of scores. But I kept plugging away, won a couple of valuable frees. Once you keep doing that, kept plugging away, you’ll always come good.
“Against Galway I won some frees too. In my view a free won is nearly as good as a score, because of the amount of good free-takers around. In our team we’ve a very good free-taker in Eoin Kelly. That’s a great asset.”
The fact that Waterford were in a position for Mullane’s late point to count came down to one thing; the now innate sense of belief that it’s not over until it’s over.
“No, we never thought that game was gone. Because the way it is now, it’s going to go down to the 72nd minute. I think the one thing we’ve been doing this year is to keep going until the end. It’s a pact we’ve decided on this year.
“I suppose in the Munster final, even though we were beaten, we kept going until the end there. And we brought that into the Galway game. It’s about getting into the habit of finishing strongly. We didn’t throw in the towel against Tipperary, even though the game was probably over as a contest at half-time, or 10 minutes into the second half.
“But once you get into the habit of keeping going until the end you don’t know when it will come good for you again. If we’d done the opposite there, threw in the towel against Tipperary, then you get into that bad habit, and we might have done it against Galway too. So I reckon the finish we had against Tipperary stood to us in the Galway game.”
It can’t have been too long after that win over Galway before the Waterford players realised Kilkenny were up next – the team that beat them 3-30 to 1-13 in the All-Ireland final last September. Mullane doesn’t hide the fact that last year’s game was a disaster for them. He’s watched the DVD and it’s no less crushing than being out there on the field.
“Once they got off to the start they did, the momentum was with them. It’s very hard to peg back a team when they have so much class on display. It’s a bit like Kerry yesterday, there was class coming from all angles. You aren’t just being hit by one sucker punch, you’re being hit by 15 of them.”
So how do they try to address that on Sunday? “Where do you start?” he asks back. “We’re coming up against the greatest team in history. It looks like they’re going to be full strength, but we’re looking forward to it and hoping that we can give a better account of ourselves than we did last year. They seem to get goals at crucial times in games and it has a killer effect on the opposition.”
For Mullane, there was more to come when his club, De La Salle, went down to Portumna in the All-Ireland club final, 2-24 to 1-8. He says that was the more difficult result to get over. “It was extremely difficult. It must be a record, for any player, to be beaten in two All-Ireland finals by a combined total of over 40 points. So I did find it hard the weeks after St Patrick’s Day. I just took a break. The management gave me the time I needed, and I just put the hurl away and got my head together. And decided to go at it again.
“I’m after having two long years. People say I might be burnt out, having been on the go the past two years. But I’m relatively fresh, because I haven’t put in the intense winter training. I’ve boxed clever leading up to games. I’d a touch of hamstring coming into the first Limerick game. So I haven’t done a whole lot of training. I think that’s still a key asset in today’s game.
“Sunday is just another game, at the end of the day. Okay, it’s an All-Ireland semi-final, but last year is gone. There’s no grudges. We don’t hold any of that at all . . . The way we see it, we were beaten by a far superior team last year. Last September is gone in our minds. The pick of Ireland wouldn’t have beaten them last year. It’s a new year and you just move on.”
