Injury gave David Collins a reality check

Galway hurler David Collins has admitted he’d have retired by now if it wasn’t for the career-threatening injury which forced him to take stock and conclude he’d been acting like ‘a tool’.

Collins, 32, has played in three All-Ireland finals and hopes to feature on Sunday week against Westmeath in the Leinster quarter-finals though he was initially told his career was over after serious ankle trouble in 2007.

It cost him around two-and-a-half years of his career though he now reflects if he hadn’t stepped out of the inter-county bubble at that stage, he may have continued along a destructive personal path which would have led to a premature retirement.