‘It was the kick in the backside you don’t want to be getting – but, if I was to look back now, I wouldn’t change what happened to me, because of the whole learning experience out of it, the appreciation for life.’
Mickey Coleman understates matters somewhat there. As boots up the behind go, what happened on March 29, 2021 almost sent him flying through death’s door, never to return.
Struck by a so-called ‘Widow-maker’ cardiac attack, his heart actually stopped three times, flat-lined: once in his house and twice in the ambulance taking him to hospital.
His largest coronary artery had become blocked by a detached piece of plaque.
The survival rate is a meagre 6 per cent.
Astonishingly, amazingly, the medics saved his life.
The tale he has lived to tell is an extraordinary one.
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Coleman is a sporting history-maker, a member of the Tyrone panel that made their breakthrough All-Ireland senior football triumph in 2003.
Yet ‘Pulse’, published by Hero Books, is much more than the story of his life from rural Ardboe to the steps of the Hogan Stand in Croke Park and then on to running his own successful construction business in New York.
Mickey Coleman tells readers about his second life, and how he came to be living it.
Obviously that massive heart attack two-and-a-half years ago was transformative, and it altered his entire approach to life, he confirms:
“100 per cent. There’s a quote in the book says ‘Every man has two lives: they start to live their second when they realise they only have one’.
“I took the heart attack two weeks short of my 42nd birthday. It took Mickey Coleman 41 years to figure out who Mickey Coleman was, really.
“It was the kick in the backside you don’t want to be getting – but, if I was to look back now, I wouldn’t change what happened to me, because of the whole learning experience out of it, the appreciation for life.”
Meditation and dedication
His diet now is almost entirely vegan-based, apart from some fish or the occasional slice of pizza. Well, New York is still his home.
He also “started doing yoga and really got into meditation, and found it really helped me. It took me a good while to really establish it, or get it - I was at it for a couple or three months before I actually found that bliss. That’s all part of the process.
“It’s something I’d never done prior to the heart attack. I was very sick when I came out of the coma. It was during Covid, there was a lot of time to think, a lot of long days and long nights in the ICU trying to get better again.
“It doesn’t matter, materialistically, what you have – and I had enough of that. None of it could get me out of that bed or make me better.
“There was a real determination there, whether you can to call it ‘character’, ‘will to live’, you tap into the spiritual side of things because it’s really all you have then at that point.”
The wider perception of the younger Mickey Coleman was of a joker, an entertainer, a singer/songwriter.
Yet even before that life-changing event of March 2021 there was a different side, a steely determination which helped turn him into a successful business owner in New York.
“Aye,” he laughs], “a lot of people would have seen that [lighter] side of me – but running a business in New York is no joke, you’re in the most cut-throat economy in the world. You have to go at it, and go at it hard. With that comes a lot of challenges, the stresses of it, employing over 100 people is not an easy task in New York in the construction industry.
“Who knows, that might have contributed to what happened to me? We still have the business, it’s still thriving, going from strength to strength.
“But it’s more how you manage all that, is what I’ve learned. Every day you face challenges, they’re not going to go away; it’s how you control those in your own mind. Physically, how do you control that, so it doesn’t get over the top of you, that it’s manageable.”
Regrets? He has…one
Going to New York has been the making of Mickey Coleman, as well as almost the breaking of him.
It’s clear that he is truly seizing his second chance, living his second life differently. The past is the past.
Yet he does admit to one certain regret, for the only time in our interview responding before the question was finished, when asked if he felt he could have achieved more as a footballer:
“I do, aye, I do. I was first called into the county [senior] squad in ’99 with Danny Ball. I was called in the following year with Eugene McKenna, but decided not to go, went to America for a year-and-a-half, went playing music in Spain.
“I’d been with Mickey [Harte] two years in the Tyrone U21 squad, so I was primed to bounce on in. I was lucky enough to get in in ’03. But I wish I had been doing a bit earlier – same thing with the minors, I didn’t get a chance because I went to America, I’d uncles out there.
“Absolutely, looking back, that’s probably one of the regrets that I do have, that I didn’t go at it earlier and get more established.”
Still, moulded, toughened by the school of hard knocks around Ardboe, and actually taught in Cookstown by his future Tyrone captain Peter Canavan, he was good enough to be part of the Red Hands panel which lifted the Sam Maguire Cup for the first time.
‘The Brantry Boy’
In a strange twist of fate, Coleman had the famous trophy at his Ardboe home the morning that the dreadful news broke of the sudden death of new Tyrone skipper Cormac McAnallen in March 2004.
Mickey wrote the song ‘Brantry Boy’ in tribute to his friend and colleague, and says now: “It’s crazy. Little did I realise when I wrote that song how relevant it would be to me years later. It sends chills up my spine just thinking about it.”
Football, he believes, helped save his own life in March 2021: “I was always physically fit, that was always the easy part for me getting back on my feet. But mentally and spiritually it’s not that easy. When something like that happens to you there’s a big mental side that’s very hard to overcome.
“Thankfully I had the tools. I think it’s from my sporting background, playing with the Tyrone teams of the past, with Ardboe, having that resilience that was instilled in me through sport, got me out the other side.
“I’d a good family network, good support from my wife and kids. I was very fortunate in a way. A lot of people don’t have those things. I’ve realised that from talking to people at the book launches who are going through their own battles every day.
“I guess my story is relatable to a lot of people. Average Joe Bloggs, two kids, wife, having it all to do. There are lot of people in the same boat.”
His first comeback
His playing career had seemed finished in 2007 after he suffered a terrible leg break playing a league game up in Aghyaran for Ardboe.
However, he gained some insight into his mental and physical strength. A visit to former Meath manager Sean Boylan – on the advice of Coleman’s one-time Tyrone team-mate Sean Cavanagh – aided the healing process.
More impressive still than getting back into football, though, just over a year after his awful fracture, Coleman’s performances on the pitch had earned him Ardboe’s ‘Club Player of the Year’ accolade.
“In all of us, it’s surprising the strength you have when it’s all you have to work with,” he suggests. “When I was recovering from the heart attack, I had nothing. I was laid bare.
“No money in the world can make you better. It’s entirely up to yourself and how you approach that, that’s a big part of that comeback.
Providing some guidance for others in similar scenarios was part of the motivation in writing ‘Pulse’, which is ‘ghosted’ by Damian Harvey of the Tyrone TeamTalk website.
“It was something that wasn’t really planned; Damian had planted the seed in my head after the heart attack and I just went with it.
“It was long, it was painful, it was therapeutic at the same time too. There was a lot of stuff brought up to the surface again…but it was enjoyable and now I’m glad we got it out the door.”
Recall and recovery
The book is enthralling, especially in the incredible level of recall of the lead-up to that heart attack, both from Coleman and his wife Erin.
The tone throughout is of stark honesty, but without any preachiness:
“A good third of the book is about the recovery and the comeback. Sickness is a great leveller.
“I’m not coming out like a superhero, it’s not like that. Every day you still have to work at it. It doesn’t go away. There’s that anxiety: ‘Is it going to happen again?’. The ‘what ifs?’.
“If my book can help two people then I’ve done my job with it. I guess it’s raising awareness.
“It’s one thing being sick and then you’re physically better; from the outside looking in people think ‘Yer man’s made a great recovery there’. But there’s a whole mental side that’s not recovering as quick as the physical side.
“You still have that cloud over your head. I still have coronary heart disease. It’s the same with cancer survivors. It still lingers. Is it going to hit me again?”
Despite all he’s been through in the past couple of years, despite those nagging fears, his sense of humour remains.
The spirit of second chances
Mention is made of Mickey Harte’s move to manage old rivals Derry, and the jolt that news must have given Coleman’s heart, to which he quips back: “I’m not sure I want to get pulled into that argument!” Asked if it was discussed at any of his book launches, he dead-pans: “No, not at all,” Then laughs.
In the spirit of second chances, he does say: “Mickey has been out a few times [to New York] with Club Tyrone. I do keep in touch with Mickey. I wish him all the best, him and Gavin [Devlin], who’s a neighbour of my own.
“It has the makings for a good rivalry. I think it’s just what the Ulster Championship needed!,” he concludes with a chuckle.
And with that, he was off to catch his flight to New York, with Erin and sons Micheal and Riordan.
He’ll be back over, of course: “I get over a good bit, but it can still can be raw when you start bringing it up. The launches were a good mixture – we had a bit of craic, ‘Mugsy’ [Owen Mulligan], Brian McGuigan, Peter Canavan in Ardboe, a bit of oul banter.
“But there’s a serious element to it too, which can be quite touching. There’s a lot of people in the audiences who came along because they know my story and they’re going through similar things themselves.”
‘Pulse’ tells a tremendous, sometimes terrifying tale, but Mickey Coleman’s second life is continuing, and this is how he lives it:
“You have to ask yourself a lot of hard questions. You’ll get all the answers, maybe not the answers you want, but you just have to go with them.”
