THE CODY KITTEN PRIMED TO BECOME A TOP CAT

Club Hurler of the Year Adrian Mullen is out for more glory on Sunday

‘He had a sight

of goal but his shot went wide’ ‘His directness

is the kind that terrifies backs’

ON THE day he was announced as the best club hurler in Ireland for the 201819 season, Adrian Mullen explained how deeply woven the game was around his life.

‘I was born into hurling,’ he said simply. ‘The Fennellys are first cousins, so I got to experience those star names first hand.

‘You get used to it but at the same time you are also in awe of them all, of what they won and achieved in the game.’

He played alongside the Fennellys, under the tutelage of Henry Shefflin, as Ballyhale Shamrocks thundered to the club championship title, blitzing through the challenge of St Thomas’s in a onesided final on St Patrick’s Day.

The precocious Mullen, who turned 20 this year, scored five points from play.

Earlier, during Ballyhale’s winter campaign, he took a call from Brian Cody. The most important man in Kilkenny hurling told the youngster to keep doing his club business, and when Ballyhale had finished with the season, he could join the senior squad.

Since making his Championship debut against Dublin in the first round of the Leinster round robin

series on May 11, Mullen has played every game.

He was outstanding in the semifinal win against Limerick, scoring four points from play but also exemplifying the insatiable desire for work that was at the root of Kilkenny’s success.

And in a forward line featuring the luminous talent of TJ Reid, Mullen will still have an enormous amount of faith invested in him on Sunday.

Debutants are not mollycoddled on All-Ireland final day, but then Mullen has excelled under the game’s greatest manager in Cody, a man who will never have his judgement impeded by sentiment.

Mullen learned early in his young senior career just how unforgiving life can be. In his and Kilkenny’s third Championship match, against Galway in Nowlan Park, Mullen had a sight of goal two minutes before half-time.

He took the shot but the sliothar fizzed wide. He was replaced before half-time, Richie Hogan coming in for him. The price he paid was not punitive; he was back in for the draw against Wexford in the final match of the regulation Leinster series, and he scored his first senior goal in the game.

Since then, he has been excellent, and the standard he reached in the win against Limerick will, if maintained, cause huge difficulties for the Tipperary full-back line on Sunday.

That unit has not been the most secure since Liam Sheedy’s return, and with Hogan and Walter Walsh likely to accompany Mullen inside, Tipperary will have a forbidding task trying to limit their influence.

And despite being the most inexperienced of the notable Kilkenny threats, Mullen provides speed and physical aggression that Cody’s team has lacked.

He is already being anticipated as a talent to savour in the lineage of his club manager, Shefflin, or the man who he played under for the county’s Under 20 team this year, DJ Carey.

‘I remember a club game in Thomastown when I was a young lad, everyone talking about DJ but not knowing what was going on,’ he said earlier this year, reminding the world of his tender years by revealing how mystified he was by the talk of Carey. And a few years ago, Ballyhale were playing a junior game and he scored a 21-yard free in the last minute. But I heard he was pretty good all right.’

Mullen will have a remarkable career if he hits the level of either Carey or Shefflin. Matching the deeds of his cousins, Michael and Colin Fennelly, would constitute an honourable sporting life, too.

Mullen was just nine when Michael Fennelly lifted the Liam MacCarthy Cup as Kilkenny captain in 2009.

His Championship haul stands, so far, at 1-12, but he has more in him if given the chance.

‘I heard Peter Canavan talking recently about winning All-Irelands, and he said you need great forwards to win All-Irelands,’ Tommy Walsh said earlier in the summer.

‘And when you’ve someone like Adrian Mullen coming through, it just bolsters up the attack and gives you a chance, it gives you hope I suppose that you can go on and compete with the best teams.’

Mullen scored 3-38 in captaining Kilkenny to the Leinster minor title two years ago.

The directness that he plays with is of a sort that terrifies defenders, and with Reid so accurate from frees, the Tipperary defence will be hampered in trying to stop him by any means necessary.

There is no manager better at trusting a player than Cody. He won the 2012 All-Ireland final replay thanks, in large part, to the audacious selection of Walter Walsh in the starting team.

Walsh was on the extreme margins of the squad all summer, but his form for the U21s and Cody’s determination to give Galway a fresh problem they would not have anticipated, saw Walsh put into service. He scored 1-3 and was central to the win.

Mullen comes with no shock value on Sunday. Tipperary know what to expect, and they will have been planning for him. But stopping him is a different job entirely.

His composure on big days has already been established in his young career, on club and county duty.

Mullen is good enough and confident enough to star on final day. Kilkenny’s newest ruthless finisher is ready for the big reveal.