Irish Daily Star - Inside Sport
DEAN’s learned from the best
DEAN Mason has faced the bullets and is learning from the best.
If it’s not TJ Reid, Colin Fennelly and young stars Eoin Cody and Adrian Mullen in the firing squad at Ballyhale Shamrocks training, it’s Anthony Nash with the University of Limerick.
Or it could have been one Henry Shefflin or Richie O’Neill.
Sometimes it’s Richie Reid, who played in goals for Ballyhale but is now outfield for club and county, with little pieces of sage advice.
Other times it was former Kilkenny keeper and current Kildare manager David Herity taking an odd sesion here and there.
It’s an astonishing array of influences to be able to call on for a young player.
Talk about learning from the best; it has been some hurling education to this point.
Mason ( was in goals as Shefflin led the club to back-to-back AllIreland titles (2019/2020), before Galway looked east for a messiah.
The club have powered on, though.
Tomorrow, eight-time All-Ireland winners Shamrocks will bid to make their 10th All-Ireland final when they face Galway side St Thomas’ at Semple Stadium. below)
Driving
They have won eight of the nine All-Ireland deciders they have contested.
The winning mentality this creates is impossible to put a price on with the likes of former hurlers of the year Shefflin (three) and current Offaly manager Michael Fennelly (one) among those driving the club on down the years.
With CVs like that, it’s no surprise both men have moved into inter-county management.
Or that Ballyhale is home to the winners of the last three young hurlers of the year in Cody (two) and Mullen (one).
But there’s more to it than ability. The never-saydie spirit the Shamrocks showed against St Rynagh’s in the Leinster club semi-final last month said it all.
A man short after Joey Cuddihy’s first-half dismissal,
Cody’s last-gasp goal got them out of jail and forced extratime when they looked dead and buried.
They then outscored the Offaly champions by 0-11 to 0-2 in extra-time to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat to book their Leinster final place.
That’s what a winning mentality does to a team, they never know when they’re beaten.
Between them, Cody, TJ Reid and Fennelly contributed 3-9 of their 3-24 tally against the Offaly champions.
“It was touch and go for us in a couple of games,” explains Mason. “It all comes back to the work rate, to discipline. You just keep fighting, keep working, until the end.”
Mason couldn’t believe it when Cody’s late goal bulged the back of the St Rynagh’s net to keep their bid for a Leinster and All-Ireland three-in-arow alive.
“Nine times out of 10, the ball comes back out (into play) again, but this time it went in. I saw the net rattling and I thought, ‘Oh my God, how is this happening?’ I was in shock.”
Mason was an outfield player as a kid but established himself between the sticks and he hasn’t looked back since.
“I was 10 or 11 and there was a lad missing one day,” he recalls. “I got in goal, made a save and have stayed there ever since!”
It’s some step up now to playing with some of the greatest forwards of the last decade at club level in Fennelly and TJ Reid.
“When you approach senior level with your club, you always need to be ready for the kind of power, the strength that everyone has,” admits Mason.
“It’s not like underage, these are fully-grown men and you need to adapt. I had to learn. It’s not just the shots. It’s their movement, they are constantly moving and criss-crossing.
Break
“On the breaks, you need to realise, ‘What do they do? Where is the man going?’
“The loose men, where are they moving to? You need to try and close them down or close the space down.
“You need to constantly keep looking out for them kind of things.”
Shefflin also helped develop his game and the way the team evolved.
“He was very good,” says Mason of King Henry. “The stuff that he brought to us was amazing — stuff that he got from the telly and stuff that he got from playing himself.
“They are the things that we incorporated into our game, as well as our own thoughts (on the game) and the different trainers as well.
“But the things that he had, and the things that he knew, were just amazing.”
Mason gives an example of one such instance.
“For my own puck-outs, he got it off Limerick, actually,” he says.
“All the players around midfield and the centreforward position would move over to one side of the field and the full-forward would make a sprint straight into the space.
“You’d always try to pop it into that space.
“That was one of the things I realised I was comfortable with the more we practised it.
“It’s little things like that — different plays that teams aren’t really ready for.
“That’s the things that stood out.
“That’s what he was able to bring to our team.”