Keeping a daily diary kept Brendan Cummins sane during the lowest period of his stellar inter-county hurling career, the former Tipperary goalkeeper has revealed.
Having held on to the number one jersey since his championship debut in 1995, Cummins was dropped by manager Babs Keating for a Munster replay against Limerick in 2007 with understudy Gerry Kennedy taking his place.
Speaking to RTÉ Sport’s Different Class, two-time All-Ireland winner Cummins said that he never gave up hope of regaining his place and began setting goals to win back the jersey, which he did for the following season.
“When you make a big decision like that, Babs was never going to go back on it, so the question was ‘what was I going to do next?’
“I sat down that night, had the usual cup of tea and wander with the family – 'what are we going to do now?'
"By the end of the year I was playing way better than I had been the previous two years"
“And then I thought, ‘diary’, and every single day from there I went to work a little bit earlier. I wrote a diary. Everything went into it: from how I felt that day, to my goals for training that night. 'Did I achieve my goals the following day?' would have been a starting point for my diary, and so on and so on.
“And that actually kept me sane though the whole thing. Because everyone was coming up to me saying, ‘you should be playing, you should be playing’.
“At the end of the day I wasn’t going to be playing and when I went into training I couldn’t carry that baggage with me because I had to try to make sure Gerry was all right.
“Because I knew at this stage that I wasn’t going to be playing and I needed to make sure he was going to be right for when he did play.
“In the background I just kept getting better and better and training stronger and stronger and felt by the end of the year I was playing way better than I had been the previous two years, knowing that I was never going to get an opportunity to show people – that was just the way it was.”
Cummins, winner of five All Stars, was involved with the Kerry hurlers this season as they won promotion to Division 1B of the league.
The 40-year-old has a young family to take care of at the moment but said that when he is able to commit “24/7”, he hopes to take on a management role.
“Someday all right, I’d like to think it’s something I’d get a handle on," he said.
“It may be a bit down the road before I get involved because I know the commitment that’s needed it you want success.”
