![\"Cork's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/5025890_3_articleinlinemobile_2035299_1_.jpg\" "\\"Cork's")
Cork’s Mark Coleman in action against Cian Lynch of Limerick during the Munster Senior Championship. Picture: Stephen McCarthy\/Sportsfile<\/p>\nThis year signals the 10th anniversary of Mark Coleman\u2019s Cork senior debut.<\/p>\n
While the successful Munster campaign of 2017 is associated with the emergence of Coleman, Shane Kingston, Darragh Fitzgibbon and Luke Meade, the Blarney man and Kingston saw game-time late in the defeat to Wexford in Thurles in 2016.<\/p>\n
That season was Kieran Kingston\u2019s first as manager and, including the Tracton man\u2019s two stints, Ben O\u2019Connor is the fifth new boss of Coleman\u2019s inter-county career. <\/p>\n
The Newtownshandrum native\u2019s stint has gone well so far, aided by familiarity with those who played under him for the Cork U20 side. While Coleman had no prior experience of working with O\u2019Connor, he had an idea of what lay ahead and that perception has materialised.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s kind of what I expected, to be honest,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew the kind of person Ben was coming into it. Obviously, he’s been involved with Midleton and Charleville and the U20s and stuff, so I think everybody knew the kind of character he was and that’s exactly the way he’s been since he came in with us. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe’s the same with us as he is with ye [media], just straight to the point and that’s it. No, no surprises, just basically we get a lot of the same messages from every management team, it’s just different ways of communicating it, so there was no surprise really.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a side often labelled with the inconsistency tag, Sunday\u2019s league final against Limerick will represent a fifth straight decider for the Cork hurlers and so a manager like O\u2019Connor, who seeks strong performances every day, is a good fit.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, yeah, I think when you’re playing for the Cork hurlers, there’s always high demands,\u201d Coleman says, \u201cand there’s always that kind of, I suppose, external noise that you have to deal with, whether you’re going well or whether you’re not going well.<\/p>\n
\n It\u2019s something I suppose we’re used to, and whether it’s good, bad or indifferent, we kind of try and block it out and get on with what we have to do really. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s the way you have to do it in any high-performance environment, is try and just focus on the group ourselves and that’s kind of what we’ve been doing the last few years anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cork’s Mark Coleman in action against Cian Lynch of Limerick during the Munster Senior Championship. Picture: Stephen McCarthy\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n
And is it easy for Coleman to block out that external noise, given how easy it is for the critics to make themselves heard nowadays?<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, not easy, but you have to,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
\u201cI suppose, especially in this day and age with social media and all that, there’s things that just get thrown up on your screen without even, you might just open your phone and there’ll be something there, but you just have to kind of roll with it, and know that that’s going to come with the territory and just do your best to not let it affect you. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt probably comes easier for the older fellas, but it’s the younger fellas who might struggle with it a bit. They might find it hard to walk away from it, but all you can do is just advise them and just say, look, it’s all part of your territory, and we just focus on ourselves. <\/p>\n
\n All that matters is the opinions inside the four walls of the dressing room, so that’s all we have to kind of keep telling fellas really.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
Winning silverware goes a long way to silencing the outside voices. Overcoming Limerick in last year\u2019s Munster final at TUS Gaelic Grounds gives Cork confidence going up the N20 but, equally, it doesn\u2019t make the test any easier.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think, for us, it’s obviously still going to be a massive challenge going up there,\u201d Coleman says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re under no illusions that it\u2019s going to be a difficult day, or a difficult task, for us. After the Munster final, all it does is give you that bit of extra confidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou’re never going to be going in there with fear or anything like that, but you always draw from your past experiences.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were fortunate, I suppose very fortunate, to come out of there last year after penalties. It\u2019s never going to be an easy day up there, but I suppose just that bit of confidence off the back of last year, maybe but it’s obviously still going to be a difficult task any time you go up to the Gaelic Grounds.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This year signals the 10th anniversary of Mark Coleman\u2019s Cork senior debut. While the successful Munster campaign of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1964,61,60,112],"class_list":["post-378430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-cork-gaa","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}