Beating blackouts on long road to Croker

It was breaking away from club training and returning with his face muddied and gravel strewn that first alerted Paddy Gumley’s teammates to his closely guarded secret.

Until his 20s, even the Cavan man’s parents didn’t realise that he blacked out after periods of intense training, a problem he kept to himself out of sheer embarrassment.

It was only when he suffered one such incident while training with Tommy Carr’s Cavan football panel in early 2009 that he was rumbled.