One of the brightest young talents in handball has swapped the hustle and bustle of Dublin for a move back to his native Connemara. PAUL FITZPATRICK spoke to Martin Mulkerrins, who plays Charly Shanks in tomorrow’ Senior Singles semi-final, about bringing it all back home.
There’s more to the handball season than the names, games, scorecards and medals. Scratch the surface and there are a thousand threads running through the narrative.
Take that of Martin Mulkerrins, the young gunslinger from Galway who has been long ear-marked as a potential senior champion.
It has taken time for the Moycuillen man to make that breakthrough at the top level, through no fault of his own. Recently graduated from UCD with a bucketload of colleges titles, he’s now making his way in what he calls “the real world”. And that’s a big change.
The 23-year-old Gaeilgeoir has made his way west again, leaving the bustle of the capital for the relative tranquillity of Connemara. All the while, though, he’s been working on a dream, one he hopes will finally come through this month.
What’s it like being at home? Good, he says. Very good. Results would back that sentiment up – tomorrow, Martin will play in his first senior semi-final against Charly Shanks while one his training partners, brother Diarmuid, is in his first minor semi-final.
“I’m very happy, it has been a bit of a change of scene from the last few years for me obviously,” Mulkerrins told GAAHandball.ie.
“I graduated in my degree last September and was working on a Masters in UCD until Christmas. Since January I’ve been working in Athenry in Teagasc. That’s a bit of a change, working 8.30 to 5pm and managing the training around that.
“It’s good, there’s more of a routine – when you’re working, you have to manage your time better. It is that bit different, you don’t have the same time available to you but that’s the real world. I’m very happy with how it’s going.”
As well as being an outstanding player, Mulkerrins is a handball nut. Where some players are selective about what competitions they’ll enter, he has combined 40x20, 60x30 and One Wall and even established his own popular tournament during Seachtain na Gaeilge on campus at Belfield.
The feeling now, though, is that his sights are calibrated on one goal. That tunnel vision takes time to develop – in Mulkerrins’s case, maybe, it was part of growing up.
He’s got, he says, “a team behind him”, including strength and conditioning expertise and whatever else it takes. He’s a working man now, focussed on a goal, and no longer a kid with a ‘have gloves, will travel’ mentality.
“I’ve got a few games with the likes of Robbie and Joe McCann and I’ve been training on my own, I haven’t played as many games as other years.
“I trained with my brother as well, he’s in the minor semi-final this weekend so I suppose it’s a great achievement to have two brothers in the minor semi-final and senior semi-final.
“He’s going well, this weekend we both have the freedom to play our own games and just go for it. The two boys we’re playing are the favourites, they were in the respective finals last year. We’re going in with nothing to lose, it’s his first time in a minor semi-final and my first time in a senior semi-final.
“Training has been going very well so we’re going to give it our best.”
Not playing the US Collegiates has also freed up time to concentrate on the big one. Mulkerrins freely admits he “wouldn’t have won that game [Kennedy] without every bit of energy I had” – in other words, returning from the US on the eve of an All-Ireland championship match is now a thing of the past.
That was the case three years ago when he landed home on a Tuesday and played Michael Finnegan on Wednesday night. And last year, he switched time zones a few days before the quarters having picked up a bug overseas. Against the backdrop, it’s not surprising he hasn’t made the last four before now.
The biggest change moving home was wrought has been in organising training games. He’s got a few in with the likes of Ger Coonan, Darragh Daly and Joe McCann but otherwise, the days of dropping a text to Diarmaid Nash or Brian Carroll and arranging games somewhere in the city are over.
“Everything has been going well, the only difference is the bit more difficulty in getting games but having the Gaffney and the Connacht Championship helped, and then I played the Senior Doubles with my clubmate Seamus Conneely who has just won the Connacht junior. I got plenty of games in the last month anyway.”
A new-found maturity was evident last weekend when he saw off the wily veteran Eoin Kennedy in a chess-like battle. For Mulkerrins, thinking his way through it and figuring how to set his own terms of engagement was the most satisfying aspect of the win (21-15, 21-18).
“I’m glad of what happened last weekend. Eoin is a different style of player to myself and Charly or any of the players left. Last weekend, Eoin kept me up high on the roof and around the walls, it was a tough game, an hour and 40 minutes, and I had to work hard for every point.
“I was glad to get a championship game like that after a big lay-off from the Connacht Championship. Unfortunately Michael Gregan was injured and Charly didn’t really get a game at all but the game against Eoin was worth a lot of training sessions to me.
“I took a lot of confidence from winning it, dealing with his style and imposing my own game on him. This weekend, we both have a similar style and it will be who can play better on the day.”
Shanks, beaten finalist on three occasions including a heartbreaking 21-20 third game loss against Robbie McCarthy last year, will come out shooting as always. The pair have met twice and hold one game each (Mulkerrins won 20 and 20 at the 2013 US Nationals, Shanks won an up and down shoot-out (11), 2, 13 last year).
“It was hard to see anything from his game the last week, Michael Gregan was injured but Charly seemed to be playing well.
“From my perspective I’m not really worried about him, he’s going to do what he’s going to do, I think I’ve improved my serve and a lot of aspects of my game in the last year and I’m just going to do my best and go for my shots.”
Can’t say fairer than that.