On November 9th, 2020, a headline in The Irish Times sports pages read: Rebel Keane returns from Australia to shock Kingdom. The shock? Kerry dumped out of the Munster Championship at the semi-final stage, thereby denying them a tilt at Sam Maguire due to that year’s truncated Covid championship.
The Rebel in question was Mitchelstown man Mark Keane, the then 20-year-old finding the net at the death to give Cork a two-point win at Páirc Uí Chaoimh.
Not since 2012 had Kerry missed out on the provincial decider. To be responsible for such a killer blow against the Goliath Kingdom on your senior debut is the stuff of dreams. But for Keane, the sporting dreams were coming thick and fast.
“When you see a contract in front of you with money, it’s hard to turn down,” the now 25-year-old says of his decision to sign a rookie contract with AFL side Collingwood back in 2018.
READ MORE
“When you’ve never grown up with that, it’s kind of surreal. And I suppose when you’re 18, you say you’ll give it a go for two years, and then come back [to Ireland] at 20, and you can still have a 10, 11, 12-year career playing for Cork.”
After two years of learning his new trade, Keane made his debut for the Magpies in August 2020, but a few weeks later was on a flight back to Ireland having got permission from his club to return home.
Keane emerged from quarantine to the immediate, socially-distanced embrace of the Cork senior football panel, having played underage for the county up to his Australian departure. Any questions regarding Keane’s inclusion were silenced with that extra-time goal to set up the Munster final meeting with Tipperary.
“I feel like if I didn’t get that chance to go home [to play for Cork], I probably would be sitting here saying ‘what if’, and ‘I’d love to do it’, but at least when I get home to play it kind of resets me to come back out here for a new season,” Keane explains, his return to Ireland during the AFL’s off-season now a feature of his year.
But the return trip wasn’t always a given. When he came back to Ireland after the 2021 AFL season, helping his club Ballygiblin to an All-Ireland junior hurling final (in which they were defeated by Kilkenny’s Mooncoin), he decided to stay put, opting out of his Collingwood contract a year early.
Having joined the Cork senior hurling panel under Kieran Kingston for 2022, his path looked fairly set until the AFL came a-knocking once more. This time it was the Adelaide Crows at the door.
Keane made his debut for the Crows in July 2023 in a win over city rivals Port Adelaide and featured in their four remaining games of the season, equalling in a month the total number of appearances he had made in his four years at Collingwood.
But it was 2024 when Keane’s AFL career really started sucking diesel.
Despite a disappointing season for the Crows, finishing 15th out of the 18 clubs in the league, Keane’s form was a point of optimism, averaging 16.8 disposals and 12.9 kicks per game to give him an elite ranking as per the league’s benchmarking, enough to earn him a contract extension that will see him remain in Adelaide to 2028.
“I could have signed on for more,” says Keane. “It’s just I didn’t want to commit to that long, knowing that home is always home for me.
“But then also you do need that security of where you want to be in a few years. I’m just glad I’m signed on until 2028 now. And then, when that time comes, we’ll see what happens.”
And his decision is made all the better by the Crows having a remarkable 2025 season to date. They sit on top of the ladder after the 23-game regular season, as the league now gets whittled down to the top eight teams for the Finals – a four-week series culminating in the Grand Final on September 27th.
“It’s hard to put a finger on it,” Keane says of what seems to be gelling better for him in his AFL second coming. “I probably just matured a bit when I was at home. I’ve just really settled in Adelaide. There are no distractions really, just to focus on playing AFL.”
And Keane’s focus has already paid dividends as he was named in the 2025 All-Australian squad, akin to being shortlisted for an All Star in GAA terms.
First up for the Crows in the finals is Keane’s old club Collingwood, whom they’ll host at the Adelaide Oval in the first qualifying final on September 4th. A win there will send them straight through to a home preliminary final, while a loss would put them into the semi-finals.
“It’s early days. The club hasn’t played in the finals since 2017, so it’s been a while since we’ve been there, but we’ve had a lot of close games, finals-like games, this year, so I think we’ve had good preparation for it.
“Especially down here at home in Adelaide as well. There’s no reason why we couldn’t get the job done.”
With many gilded days for both club and county already in his locker, Keane isn’t in short supply of sporting highlights but says a Grand Final outing would be right up there.
“I think it would be probably the best,” he says, “because the pinnacle is to win the premiership out here, and you see how hard it is to even get there.
“It’s a long way to get to the Grand Final, but if you ever got there, I reckon it’d be up there with the best days of your career.”
While his long-term sights are still set on getting back into a red jersey – “I’ve had to put the Cork dream on hold for a while,” he says – for now, it’s Australian Football all the way, and until he makes that next Rebel return, an AFL title is not a bad dream to dream.
