Mason’s street-smarts learned in the Ballyhale air

Dean Mason could shoot the breeze with the best of them.

He sits down for one of his first ever interviews but it's like he's been doing them for years. The questions rain in but there's none too difficult for a man who, at 21 years of age, has an answer for everything. You'd know he was a goalkeeper. Call it cuteness, call it street-smarts but after a quick chat, it's very easy to see how, when he was still just a teenager, Henry Shefflin deemed him good enough to mind the Ballyhale nets for a campaign that went all the way to Croke Park for the All-Ireland final. Mason had no troubles on Jones' Road. He's had little trouble since. "I remember when I was U14," the UL student says, "lads were struggling to sleep the night before and then one of the selectors told us to play the game, not the occasion.

"I always think of that, the game is still the same. It's still the same things you trained all year for. Don't change and don't do anything different. That's what I do the whole time."

It was a fair vote of confidence from Shefflin but Mason had given him reason to believe. Having been asked his aims for the year, Mason looked Shefflin in the eyes and told him he wanted to be the Ballyhale goalkeeper. "At the start of the year (in 2017), Henry pulled us all into the dressing room, one by one, and asked us our aims and I said 'I want to start senior championship.' "He said, at the minute, you need to put in the work and you need to learn and adjust to the game. It's not like a minor match or even like a minor or U20 match with Kilkenny. It's completely different again. We'll let you know how you're going, we'll keep giving you feedback and we'll help you every step of the way."