Mark Coleman: Nerves before a big game are a good thing

There may be nerves as Mark Coleman leads the Cork team around the SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh pitch prior to Sunday's Munster SHC final but he knows it's a feeling to be embraced.

If captain Darragh Fitzgibbon is unable to feature following his recent bout of appendicitis, Coleman will deputise as he seeks to win a fourth provincial medal to go with those of 2017, 2018 and 2025.

While there might be a cliché that younger players are without fear and those with more experience feel the nerves more, Coleman can assess things more rationally.

"When you get older, you recognise that the nerves are a positive," he says, "as opposed to when you are younger, you might see it as, 'Oh no, I'm nervous,' and process it in a different way. 

"When you get older, you understand that nerves are a good thing and is fuel for your performance, as opposed to something that is going to tear you down.

"As soon as you start meeting up with the lads and getting your rubs, getting your food, and you know the game is just around the corner, the nerves start to build, but as soon as you get out onto the pitch and go through your warm-up, the nerves wouldn't be there."

So much so that Coleman allows himself to relax during the parade.

"You have to enjoy it, really," he says.

"Something I always try and make a conscious effort to do when going around in the parade, definitely for the first half of the parade, just relax, breathe through it, look up, look around the crowd, enjoy it, take it in.

"Then, halfway around the parade, you lock in, you go, right, focus on the first ball. You're ready to rock then."

Cork became only the second team to go through a Munster round-robin campaign with a perfect four-from-four record and, in doing so, conceded just 3-84, the lowest tally allowed by any team since the system resumed after the Covid-impacted years of 2020 and 2021.

As impressive as the defending has been, Coleman is keen to impress on the fact that the lives of him and his fellow backs have been made manageable by the workrate from the Cork forwards.

“It's probably something throughout the whole team, really,” he says.

“The forwards are working incredibly hard and stopping the ball coming in. I think just as a defensive unit, we're probably that bit more solid, I suppose, defending as a team.

“For us in the half-back line, getting back and supporting the lads as best we can and just working more as a unit, but like I said, that starts up in the forward line and if they can stop the ball coming down, it makes our job a lot easier.”

Along with the tag of being poor at defending, Cork have often had to deal with criticisms regarding inconsistency – however, Sunday’s clash makes it six straight competitions in a row, beginning with the 2024 All-Ireland series, where they have reached the final.

“Yeah, it's good,” Coleman says.

“I'm on the panel now a good while and for years it would have been thrown at us that we couldn't put two performances together, so to get to six finals is definitely a positive.

“It's a short enough career that when you're playing you want to be going out and getting to finals and winning as much as you can. It's a short window of opportunity, so hopefully we can go out and do that.”