By John Harrington

If you’re going to cut it as a hurling goalkeeper at the highest level then the most important thing you need in your locker is mental strength.

Every goalkeeper’s career is going to be pock-marked by nightmarish days when everything goes wrong, so bouncebackability is a must.

It’s a quality that Ballyhale Shamrocks’ young custodian, Dean Mason, clearly possesses.

He still has total recall of the “disaster of a day” when he conceded six goals in the 2015 Kilkenny U-16 Division One Shield hurling final against Naas (the Kildare side have a special dispensation to play underage hurling in Kilkenny), but that raw experience never drained his confidence, it just made him want to get better.

It says a lot about him that two years later at the age of just 17 he had established himself as the Ballyhale senior team’s first-choice goalkeeper and would go on to win county, provincial, and All-Ireland titles in his maiden season.

“The keeper that was in before me, he was there for a good few years,” recalls Mason of his sudden elevation to the club’s senior team.

“He went away for a few and then came back again. At the start of the year Henry (Shefflin) pulled us all into the dressing room, one by one, and asked us our aims and I said I wanted to start senior championship.

“And 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.”

It can’t have been easy walking into a dressing-room full of All-Ireland winners and living legends and being immediately given the responsibility of manning the most pressurised position in the team at the age of 17.

Mason is a very solid sort of character who doesn’t lack for self-confidence, but admits the learning curve was a very steep one initially.

“It was tough at the start, especially playing in goals,” he says. “Because you're a young person and there's people there who are 30-plus and they're there 15 or 20 years.

“At the time I was saying I just needed to keep my head down and keep working hard and keep getting feedback off the senior members of the panel. That's what I just kept doing.

“The whole game changes, the pace of the ball, the speed of the game completely changes from underage level to senior level. That was something I struggled to adjust to when I first started out playing games.

“When you're playing against forwards of inter-county standard with other clubs, it's different from having a young lad in the corner. The power of the shot and the movement of that player is completely different. You just have to adapt to that as well.”

The weekly experience of trying to save TJ Reid rockets in training accelerated his shot-stopping development.

Off the pitch, the Kilkenny star was one of many team-mates who took the time to offer words of encouragement and advice to Mason to help him find his feet as quickly as possible.

“Yeah, TJ said talk to me about anything. Richie Reid, as well, who used to play in goal for the Shamrocks up until 2015. He was there saying there's tips there and feedback we can give you. And I said, ‘yeah, keep them coming’.

“We were lucky enough that Richie O'Neill was in with Henry as well. He's gone to Galway with Henry now. But he was with us and was a goalkeeping coach as well. I learned massively from Richie.”

Mason was one of a number of new faces that manager Henry Shefflin introduced in his first year in charge of Ballyhale in 2018.

The alchemy of talented youth and experienced veterans produced gold immediately as they swept all before them in Kilkenny and Leinster before destroying Galway champions St. Thomas’ in the 2019 AIB All-Ireland Club SHC Final.

Rookie goalkeeper Mason was rock-solid throughout the triumphant campaign. At just 18 years of age and still a school-boy, he was now an All-Ireland champion.

“It was crazy because I was still hurling with St Kieran's College at the time,” he says.

“You'd tell people we're after winning and people would say 'oh, you must be in college or something?' And I'd say, no I'm in sixth year, I'm doing the leaving cert. And they'd say, that's amazing, that's not heard of a whole lot.”

Ballyhale Shamrocks have been unstoppable ever since, completing a four-in-a-row of Kilkenny titles, winning all three Leinster Championships they’ve contested, and back to back All-Irelands.

The young guns like Mason that were blooded in 2018 are now battle-hardened and determined to continue pushing the high-standards that have made Ballyhale Shamrocks the most successful club team in the history of the game.

“Myself, Eoin (Cody) and Darragh Corcoran are all the same age and we were all in Kierans together,” says Mason.

“We'd always push each other. Darragh and Eoin would be marking each other in training and Eoin would be scoring goals and you'd be pushing yourself for Darragh to do better, not to give him the chance to score the goal.

“And then the older lads tend to want us to push on, saying that the younger lads should have to drive this. So, we always try to drive that. That's the way we operate.

“New younger lads come in every year and they want to push themselves to get on either a 24, 26 or 15 or whatever. And also the older lads see that I mightn't have many years left or whatever so they don't want to just keep pushing for as long as they can and keep winning

“These opportunities don't come around too often. You always want to make the most of it. Just grab it by the horns and go for it. Don't hold back.”