John Mullane has a passion for Waterford hurling that has spurred them on to the top table, writes KEITH DUGGAN

THERE ARE days when John Mullane seems possessed by emotions and furies that defy the slogans that the advertising men like to attach to the marketing images of the All-Ireland hurling championship. It has long been obvious that the Waterford man has that rare and universal gift of creating suspense simply by taking possession of the ball. But it is not just the sight of him running fearlessly and urgently at opposition defences that sets him apart. It is the contortions that he pulls with his face, the worry, the anguish, the joy have all been up there on the big screen.

There have been times, in the eight years that Mullane has been hurling for Waterford, when it seemed as if the pale man from De La Salle cared so much about the old game and about his county that he was continually waging some internal conflict in the great GAA theatres.

His public pronouncements have been rare enough and often dusted with wry humour and yet, in an era when Ireland’s finest hurlers have become masters at saying nothing, Mullane stands apart for his bursts of blunt and honest self-assessment. More than most, he has been in the doghouse and who can forget that half-confessional, half-pleading admission to the television cameras: “I don’t want to lave me county down.”

TOMORROW, HE WILL play in his fifth Munster final and, in the absence of several pillars of the modern Decies hurling, the pale firebrand has become the de facto leader: the statesman of the team. His form in Waterford’s semi-final matches against Limerick has been rightly lauded: the irrepressible zest and imagination were back in force but seemed framed by an exterior calmness.

He struck six points from play in the drawn match and four in the replay. The shoot-from-anywhere optimism of his younger days had been replaced by a more judicious shot selection that comes with maturity and experience. Moreover, he has added to his repertoire, no long turning to the comfort zone of his left so often.

The plaudits have followed, with GPA and All Star monthly awards this week – it was noted with amazement that this was his first ever monthly All-Star honour. (He has made one All Star team, in 2003). He has, after all scored, 11-93 in 35 championship matches and has long been recognised as Waterford’s most intangible asset: an attacker whose game cannot be truly read or predicted.

“He deserves the plaudits he is getting now,” says Ciarán Carey – Mullane’s own all-time favourite player. “What Joe Canning is to Galway, so John Mullane is to Waterford. That is how I see it anyhow.”

Wayne Sherlock laughs quietly when asked to recall the match that he remembers Mullane most for. The classy Blackrock corner back is the opponent that Mullane has singled out as the defender he has found stickiest. Sherlock is on a family holiday in the Far East at present but thought nothing of taking a late-night phone call to talk about an opponent that he both relished and feared meeting during his days holding the last line for Cork.

“You automatically think of the Munster final in ’03 when it comes to John,” he says. “He was just unstoppable that day. He scored the three goals and I think I had been sent over to him after the second one . . . didn’t stop the third one going in. You know, he has that brilliant turn and once he gets the first step on a defender, the pace he has is frightening. If he gets past you at all, you are in trouble.

“I had marked him in the 2002 championship as well, I think that might have been his first year. He is a player that I enjoyed coming up against, very lively and sure it was clear to everyone how passionate he was about it. There was never a dirty stroke that I can recall either. I suppose down the years people had this idea of John that never really added up to the person that I met off the pitch. A proper gentleman, you know.”

Wind the clock back a decade ago, when a talented, uncertain group of Waterford hurlers were inching their way towards liberation from Munster and Mullane was just a tall, skinny kid bouncing around in the county underage scene. It was not as if he had been forecast as the saviour in waiting of the Déise game.

Stephen Frampton has a clear memory of the first time that he saw Mullane in the flesh. He arrived with his club, Ballygunner, to play a Sergeant Cup game in West Park against De La Salle. Warming up, he noticed this young lad in De La Salle colours.

“Big, long and skinny” was his first impression. Mullane stood out even before the ball had been thrown in, the long pale limbs and suede head and then, once the match started, for an exhibition of speed and keenness that was startling.

“I had honestly never seen him before,” says the Waterford veteran. “But he just ran riot against us. I was glad that I was not marking him. He must have been about 19 then and he had this incredible pace that set him apart. He was phenomenal that night and I think I knew then that it wouldn’t be too long before we saw him appearing for Waterford.”

Now, Waterford in full summer plumage would look incomplete without Mullane. That he recovered from the blues of that All-Ireland final low by leading De La Salle to their first ever county and Munster title meant that he was able to leave last year’s disappointments behind him.

The captain’s speech he delivered after the county final win over Abbeyside in Fraher Field seems to capture the essence of Mullane: delivered on a murky southeast November afternoon, he raises the cup and fairly jolts it with that elastic frame of his and then offers a terse summary of his pride at being the first man “to pick up the cup for De La Salle”, growling into the microphone such is his welling emotion and then, almost instantly turning reflective and mellow as he pays handsome and eloquent tribute to several friends that the club had lost in the months before that big triumph.

AND THAT HAS always been the thing with Mullane. There is more to him than meets the eye. Gone is the handy assumption that he was another wild child of sport, one of those ball players who just plugged into the current of the packed stadium and rode it until smoke came out his ears. In his first seasons, gnarled defenders could toy with him with a choice word here or there and there were days when he reacted. A live wire, they said. A short fuse. But there was always more to him than that.

Go back to that day in Thurles that illuminates itself so readily in the mind of Sherlock, when Mullane hit 3-1 and finished on a losing side. The old ground is already practically empty when Mullane finally makes his appearance. He has the gear bag thrown over his shoulder, like a kid walking home from school and is wearing a round-necked sweater that is adorned with a gold crucifix.

He looks surprised to find anyone at all waiting for him and his eyes are still red from the exertions of the day. Mullane has given one of the best exhibitions of hurling of the year. But he was restless in the late afternoon, his mind turning to his darkest experience on a hurling field, when he was suspended for 12 weeks after an opponent was seriously injured in an under-21 challenge game.

“I suppose back in January I was going through hell. Hurling wasn’t on the agenda at all and I never dreamed I would be back playing in a Munster final. People in Waterford rallied around me in those 12 weeks and got me back on the rails at a time when life was hell on and off the field.”

He was not just paying lip service. When he spoke that evening, he sounded like a haunted man, like someone who would have given anything to undo the mad and messy few moments in that challenge match.

Perhaps it was the loneliness of those weeks that led Mullane to make his famous stand the following year. Another Munster final and a red card, this time for a clash of heads against Brian Murphy. Mullane took his medicine and refused to go down the road of taking a legal injunction that would have almost certainly enabled him to bypass the suspension and play in the All-Ireland semi-final against Kilkenny. That honesty won him praise from across the land.

Mullane’s acceptance of his punishment spoke more eloquently about the principle of fair play and sportsmanship than the most sophisticated legal arguments could hope to do and it could be deemed as the beginning of the second act in John Mullane’s hurling life.

IT IS NO surprise that Carey is the hurling man that Mullane most readily identifies with. In the 1990s Carey was unique: free-thinking and free-wheeling, indispensable to the cause of his county but never an establishment man, occasionally infuriating and often breathtaking. So it is with Mullane now.

“I suppose we would have played against one another, when I was finishing off,” Carey said this week. “But I don’t know John at all. Even in the beginning, you could see that he was dynamic and had that explosive speed but maybe didn’t always have the temperament to match. But he seems to have matured now and won’t let other teams rattle him the way they might have in the past. His hitting on his bad side has improved enormously and that obviously makes him more of a threat. But apart from all that, the way he brings his game to the crowd and gets them into it is what makes him so exciting and important for Waterford.”

For the De La Salle man, there could be no higher praise.