Mark Keane: They'd be saying 'Go learn the rules'

Cork's Mark Keane has definitively left the AFL behind him and is determined to be remembered as more than a modern-day Tadhg Murphy.

After three years as a professional in Australia, the 21-year-old told his club Collingwood over winter that the pull of Cork hurling and football was too strong and that his Aussie Rules career was over.

While the wider public here knows him best for the sensational last-second goal which dumped Kerry out of the 2020 senior football championship, it is hurling that Keane is prioritising for the year ahead.

This weekend, his club Ballygiblin contest the All-Ireland junior club hurling final against Kilkenny's Mooncoin.

Keane was an imposing presence at centre-back as the north Cork outfit dispatched Tipp border rivals Skeheenarinky in the Munster junior final last month.

Keane had already decided, for the first time in four years, that he didn't feel right heading back to the Aussie Rules scene ahead of pre-season.

"It's always a tough decision when you're leaving the AFL," Keane told RTÉ Sport.

"I just had to ring the head coach and general manager and had a few conversations with them and they were very supportive of it as well, looked after me very well with my transition back to home.

"I suppose I always wanted to come home and play for Cork in either hurling or football. I just felt like it was the right time to come home. I went back over for five or six weeks for a pre-season.

"When I came home I just wasn't ready to go back. Just in my own head, I've always went back without a bother, but this time just felt it wasn't the same and wasn't ready to go back and commit to it."

Keane says that casting backward glances at the old sod is not conducive to making it in the Australian code. Completely