Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
THIS IS YOUR DESTINY COLLINS
One door closing opened another for Mellows ace
Cuala v Liam Mellows, Semple, today, 4pm
HIS Galway career ending after 2016 may have resulted in David Collins missing out on one huge prize, but then he mightn’t have picked up another one if it hadn’t.
When counties end lengthy All-ireland droughts, as Galway did after 29 years last September, there are invariably players who just missed out having finished the season before and Collins was one of a number of players who fitted into that category, the 2016 semi-final loss to Tipperary proving to be his final appearance.
When they beat Waterford in last year’s final without him, he was working as a pundit for radio, which made it easier than if he had been with regular punters in the middle of the stand.
“It did because it gave me a job, it gave me something to focus on,” he said. If I hadn’t done it I would probably have been tearing my hair out in the stand somewhere. If I was totally honest I struggled to go to games at the start.
“I got into it, ‘This is not too bad’. I enjoyed watching the boys playing hurling, because they were friends really for a long time.
“I said I’d rather they win it the year I left than two or three years down the road when I wouldn’t know the team so much, because I nearly felt part of it, and that was the best bit about it.
“You felt really that you had something given to it.”
And his club Liam Mellows benefited by seeing more of him too. They claimed a historic Galway county title, their first for 37 years, and face reigning champions Cuala in the AIB All-ireland club semifinal at Semple Stadium today.
“I played a bit better [ for the club] and the only reason I played a bit better was because I was actually back with less pressure on me. I just enjoyed it. But, I got an education from one of the younger fellas out there one day.
“We were training, and I was kind of trying to get it to a new level. I wanted to go back to nearly county level. “The man goes, ‘Collins will you calm down, relax, we are up here to enjoy ourselves and enjoy the craic like’.
“I was kind of going, ‘Right this is a new thing for me’. This is not the same level I was used to, but the club hurlers love it, they enjoy just the game that they play and it’s not all about the pressures on top of it, the outside sideshow if it, so that was a real lesson.
“I actually hurled well this year because I was injury-free for most of it.
I missed one game to a hamstring injury, that was all.”
Collins had experience of the Mellows manager, Louis Mulqueen (above), with the Clare man having been part of Ger Loughnane’s regime in Galway a decade ago which ended sourly, though that didn’t dampen
Collins’ enthusiasm for his appointment.
“No, the complete opposite, because, once Mulqueen committed to coming in
I was walking away from Galway because I knew what Mulqueen could bring to the club.
“His ability to manage a team, I’ve never seen anyone that can know 36 players the way he knows them all, the way he can get the best out of them, the way he can communicates with them, it’s incredible really so I’m absolutely thrilled that he came on board.”