Nathan Collins reflects on a mixed debut season at Wolves.
Gavin Cooney reports from Antalya, Turkey IT’S ONE DAY shy of a year since Nathan Collins dropped jaws in Poland, slaloming his way through the Ukraine team to give Ireland a breathtaking lead in what proved to be a 1-1 Nations League drop.
A year on, and Collins is sitting with journalists in the Irish team hotel reflecting on his brushes with the colder parts of football. He was initially a regular in the Wolves team and a staple of Bruno Lage’s back three. What personal achievement Collins found in that was mantled by the collective turmoil, with Wolves falling down the table, spending Christmas in the bottom place.
“I wasn’t playing as much as I’d like but the club needed me to step into a role that supported the lads. Making sure I was ready as I could be called upon whenever. I just kept myself busy, kept myself ticking over, kept myself ready and was there for the lads whenever they needed me.”“It is obviously tough to take but it is obviously the gaffer’s decision. My job was to train harder, work harder and get myself back into the team. As a person, who I am, I will never give up.
“I wasn’t really looking at it, like, I need to prove myself. I was being more of a team player. I didn’t want to make it a competitive thing because of the position we were in, I didn’t want another relegation, I didn’t want to go down again so I just said I’d bite the bullet and be a team player. Get on with it.
“The prep is really crucial”, says Collins. “If we went to Greece without any [warm weather] prep it would be a shock to us all.”
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