ALL-IRELAND SHC SEMI-FINAL WATERFORD v TIPPERARY: Tom Humphrieson how the veteran Tipperary goalkeeper Brendan Cummins has the skills and personality to influence the flow of a game, and has done so repeatedly

BACK TO work tomorrow. Back to those few grassy yards beneath the white woodwork. The lattice of shadows and the hum of the crowd behind him. A lonely office. Fifteen years and over 60 appearances now and Brendan Cummins fills the space as well as he ever has though.

Sixty-one appearances. More championship minutes than any goalie in history. Closing in on Christy Ring’s record of 64 championship games, a magic number he would have surpassed were it not for being made to vanish in 2007.

Perhaps the measure of his standing in the game is the shocked whisper which went around Semple Stadium that day in 2007 when Babs Keating, his own clubman and the man who had given him his senior county debut back in 1995, dropped him.

On such days the rumours which course through the stands and press area about team changes are usually reliable.

There was a resistance to belief that day, though. Bereavement would be the only reason anybody could think of for dropping Brendan Cummins from a Tipp team. And nobody had died.

Yet when Tipp appeared Cummins appeared too and diligently warmed up the young substitute goalkeeper, Gerry Kennedy, before vanishing to the bench where the snappers gathered like hungry pigeons to get the novel shots of Brendan Cummins sitting down. He endured his banishment with humility, dignity and silence.

The thought of it still shocks, though. An All Star for three years out of the four between 2000 and ’03. He missed out in ’02, not even gaining a nomination, and famously put himself through a savage and solitary training session on the night of thatyear’s All Star awards. In the seasons after his standard scarcely dipped.

The dropping took place in 2007. He was an All Star for the fourth time in 2008. Liam Sheedy took over that year. One of the first conversations between tyro manager and veteran goalkeeper ran along the lines of: “You tell me what to do and I will do it.”

“Going back through the number of years he has been there it’s his consistency that marks him out,” says Damien Young, who worked with Cummins for three years as an understudy. “It’s very hard to pick out a mistake he made. He is so consistent. Good saves all the way through. Shot-stopping, excellent. Fielding is excellent. He has good presence about him.”

All those qualities and still he was gone. His response in terms of the work he put in with Kennedy and the promise he made himself to win back the place was as impressive as any save he has made.

“He has been one of Tipp’s best players for such a long time,” says Tommy Dunne, “so straight away there is a status that is very influential. He is a big character and a great player. There is a huge respect for him, I think, not just in the Tipp dressingroom but among his peers outside.”

Nicky English recalls the last All-Ireland which Tipp won. When he unwraps the memory it’s familiar all right. Croke Park. All-Ireland final against Galway. Tipp struggling a little. Kevin Broderick goes through. A one-on-one with Cummins. Every mind’s eye anticipates the ripple of the net, the thunder of the crowd. But then Cummins interrupts with his own reality . . .

“That day, that save was as important as anybody’s contribution. Just a crucial save from Broderick. And think on. The second goal that we scored? I suppose to be fair about it, well it would hardly have been conceded by Brendan Cummins.”

Tommy Dunne has frozen the moment also. “Everything was on the line at that moment and he made the save,” he says. “We won in the end by three points. It was their chance and Brendan stopped it. Things like that always stay with me about him.”

Those are the moments which separate the ordinary goalkeepers from the greats, the interventions which change the course of a game. Managers will often settle for reliability and no screw-ups when they audition for nets. The bonus which can bring a team to the top level is a goalie whose skills and personality can influence the flow of the game.

In a hurling era when the practitioners of the art have brought goalkeeping to a new level Cummins has managed somehow to stay cutting edge and to the forefront for 15 years. He has seen the retirement parties of a few of the greats, from Ger Cunningham to Davy Fitz to James McGarry and Damien Fitzhenry, and still he walks on.

They say this year will be his last. They have no reason for saying it though. Arguably Cummins is a more complete goalkeeper now than he was five years ago. He has altered his game from that period in the first nine or 10 years of his tenure when every puck out was a poc fada, a concerted attempt to land the ball in a neighbouring county. Distance is fine if there is a reliable paw at the end ready to sign for the receipt of every ball,

“He has had to work on his distribution,” says English, “and that is where the weakness would have been or, I suppose, a predictability. But he has worked hard. He hasn’t been helped that over the years he has been playing, that Tipp haven’t had the greatest ball-winning half forwards.

“Following on from Declan Ryan and Brian O’Meara and John Carroll in their time, the bulk of fellas who have been played in the half-forward line just haven’t been the best ball winners. So he has adapted.”

The success of that adaptation was seen most startlingly in last year’s All-Ireland final when the variety and accuracy of Cummins’ puck outs kept the ball out of stripey hands on all but 10 occasions and at least once led to scores. One ball was delivered straight to Noel McGrath who scored direct from the pass.

In a Sunday Times interview earlier this year Cummins cheerfully admitted he “wouldn’t have even seen Noel McGrath in that position five years ago”.

This year the composure and variety he has brought to his distribution has been a notable addition to his game and testimony to the work he has been doing behind the scenes with Eamon O’Shea from the Tipperary backroom team. Hard work feeds Cummins’ obsession with goalkeeping.

Tommy Dunne recalls drifting into Semple Stadium one night this summer. Tipp were playing a full-scale training match. Sun waning. Long shadows. Cummins was on the bench. Half-time came and a few kids and subs dandered on to the field. Suddenly Cummins was covering the sacred grass like a streak. Into the goal, cajoling anybody to take shots on him.

“I looked at him and thought at 35, he might have let this be a night off. But he was out there getting everything he could get out of it. He was begging fellas to take shots. He needed to be getting something out of it.”

For Young, watching the older man, he detected a huge pride in the business of perfection.

“It’s clean sheets. The challenge to get one the next day. I think that is what drives him on. He loves shutting you out. Players are getting better all the time and you want to stay ahead of the game all the time. Moving to the county seniors for a young fella is a completely different set-up altogether. Brendan’s attention to detail. The way he would get everything right in training and matches and be positive and confident all the time. You’d have to learn.”

Sixty-one games and into new territory for a goalkeeper. Boldly going etc, etc. The times when he has trained himself sick on Christmas Day and Stephen’s Day and New Year’s will never be recorded but even among modern goalkeepers he leaves behind an unusually flamboyant highlights reel of show-stopping saves.

His single-handed defiance of almost the entire Kilkenny forward line before Tommy Walsh beat him at close range seven years ago, his wondrous saves from a ball which Paul Flynn doubled on in Páirc Uí Chaoimh in 2006 and a symmetrical dive to the opposite corner of his net this time in Semple Stadium to stop Henry Shefflin.

Young remembers his own jaw dropping on more than one occasion, especially that day in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. Waterford had attacked to the left of Cummins’ goal through substitute Paul O’Brien and Cummins had to make what stands alone as an astonishing reaction save from O’Brien’s shot. The ball described an arc as it came down about 10 yards out. Paul Flynn, as perhaps only he could, made precise contact.

“That was just a brilliant save from the Paul Flynn shot,” says Young.

“A pure reaction save. When you think of it, Paul Flynn doubles on the ball and Brendan got to it in the top corner and out for a 65. An unbelievable save. That’s the genius side of the fella who works so hard.”

Cummins himself speaks of the cold-sweat terror that every goalie knows and of some reaction saves he says he can remember virtually nothing.

Those who have played in front of him, though, have never had a sense of anything but composure and measure from their last line of defence.

“I never came across him much at club level,” says Tommy Dunne, “but I remember an under-21 game years ago. We (Toomevara) were far better than Ballybacon but he kept them in it single-handedly. We should have been out of sight but he kept them going. And I think he enjoys that sometimes, those times when it is him against the cavalry. That is when he is at his best. Under siege.”

For Nicky English, it is a tribute to Cummins’ ability as a self-motivated self-starter that he scarcely recalls the goalkeeper at training during his tenure.

“Don’t ask,” he laughs. “You would just know that Cummins was off driving himself harder than anybody with the other ’keepers and with Ken (Hogan). You could let them at it and never worry. His whole demeanour in goal, I don’t know, that makes him special. The generation of ’keepers he belongs to have all done something different. Donal Óg (Cusack) with his distribution, say, but Cummins has been a great shot-stopper and I never saw a goalie before that was able to catch the ball over the crossbar. Ger Cunningham was as tall but didn’t do that. He has been phenomenal for Tipp and he has kept adding to his game.”

Sixty-one summer games. Waterford, who have always troubled Tipp, standing between Cummins and another tilt at the greatest team of our lifetime. That’s the drama and the challenge that the greatest live for and that the ordinary shrink from. A decade and a half and Cummins hasn’t had enough.

They say this summer will be his last. They don’t know why they say it. Nobody knows the hearts of the greats.