Sleepless nights over for Mike Sherry

A Friday evening in August is rarely the moment of which childhood rugby dreams are made yet for Mike Sherry the chance to run out in a low-key pre-season friendly against Connacht carried all the emotion of a torrid European night under the floodlights.

During the preceding 21 months the Munster hooker had been kept awake with the worry he might not play again as his troubled shoulder repeatedly went under the knife without resolution.

Many of Sherry’s childhood dreams had already been fulfilled, not least playing for his native province and representing his country at Test level yet the thought of being forced into retirement in his mid-20s after three surgeries filled him with dread. Which is why that August night at Thomond Park carried so much significance as the 27-year-old pulled on a red jersey for the first time since November 2013.

“First contact, first scrummaging session, all that and the first game was the big one, I was unbelievably nervous for that. I didn’t exactly play that well and looking back on the clips I was so far off the pace it was frightening, but just to get to that point was such a load off me that going into the next games I didn’t even think about it. Once you’re over that first hurdle it was, I wouldn’t say plain sailing, but your mind is at rest that your shoulder is up to it and that you could sustain the bangs. I had major doubts going into that Connacht game, major doubts.

“I was surprisingly emotional going into that match because there was a time when I thought I would never play again. A pre-season friendly isn’t exactly a time to be close to tears in the changing room, you’re normally just looking forward to going out after a hard pre-season, but I was extremely emotional and extremely nervous.

“I’d say I wasn’t exactly pleasant to be around that week. I was a ball of nerves and anything would set me off. There was a long stage there where I thought I wouldn’t pull on that jersey again so it didn’t matter that it was a pre-season friendly with just a thousand people or whatever at the match, it was a huge occasion for me, as big as a Heineken Cup match for me, a big milestone.”

The doubts had been with Sherry for a long while, though not throughout his time on the sidelines. A cruciate knee injury at the Dragons in that November Pro12 game was serious and the projected lay-off had given him the opportunity to sort out a troublesome shoulder issue.

That decision prompted a world of frustration and, eventually, the prospect of an early retirement from the game. He points to a conversation with his girlfriend Katie that prompted him to seek out sports psychologist Tadhg McIntyre as well as team-mate and fellow hooker Damien Varley.

Varley would lose his own battle with a career-threatening foot injury but was there for him in his darkest moments.

“Katie was seeing what I was going through, going in for 8am and coming home having got no results. She saw the frustration, chatted things out with me, tried to explain, you know, ‘you’re going to have to talk to someone’.

“I wasn’t sleeping at night because all this stuff was going through my head. I was waking up and panicking, ‘what am I doing with my life? I’m 25 and all I’ve ever wanted to do was play rugby and now I can’t’.

“So I met with Tadhg, I met with Varls, who was going through the same thing at the time, my family were very good and also myself.

“I made a conscious effort to think positively, to not to go to bed thinking ‘how crap is my shoulder going to feel tomorrow’. I was thinking ‘I want to achieve this’ in terms of my rehab.

“That had a huge impact, I really believe that. It wasn’t something I’d believed in before because I’d never really struggled with injuries or anything like that.

“It’s something I tried because I can be a major b****x, a bitter Munster man like we all are, and it’s fed into how I train and look at things.

“I’m in a good mental mindset.” Sherry now wants to prove his worth to a province that stood by him at his lowest ebb, Munster handing him a one-year contract that runs to next June. A few months on and the world seems a much brighter place and the Garryowen man with one Ireland cap feels no need to recalibrate those childhood dreams.

“Now that I’m back playing I still want to play for Ireland. I want to hold down the number one spot for Munster, I want to be a Lion, all the things that I wanted to be growing up I still want to be.

“Munster have been unbelievably good to me. At a time when most clubs probably would have cut me and sent me packing they stood by me.

“So I’ve a lot of loyalty to Munster, even before all of that. They were the team I grew up watching, the stadium was five minutes from my house, my dad played for them and on top of that they couldn’t have been better to me — Anthony (Foley), Garrett (Fitzgerald), the strength and conditioning guys, the doctors, everyone here looked after me during a seriously tough time so ideally I would love to sign for Munster again.

“It’s where I feel at home. Things change, obviously, but this is definitely where I want to be. I’m definitely in a good place, compared to where I was last year, or the year before. It’s been two years since I did my cruciate and then had three shoulder surgeries.

“It is only two years but it seems like a lifetime ago given all that’s gone on in my life. I couldn’t be happier to put it behind me.”