The week after he was dropped from the team early last season, Isaac Cumming lined up again in a scratch match with the reserves and injured his hamstring so horribly that he would later be ruled out for three months. On top of losing the spot he had worked so hard for all summer, he now had a whole lot of rehab to do. Then, a few hours later, Cumming sat down to watch the senior team beat Collingwood. Zac Williams hurt his hamstring that night too, leaving Cumming with another annoying thought: that should have been his way back in.
“It was the worst timing. I was frustrated enough at being axed and getting injured, then Zaccy tore his hammy and I remember thinking, ‘far out, if I’d got through this game then I would have been straight back in the side,” Cumming said. “It wasn’t the best feeling, to let myself get dropped after two games and then see opportunity go because of my injury. That wasn’t a great time, but I felt positive again pretty quickly.
“I knew I was going to be out for a while but we knew by then that the season would be short and I didn’t want to waste my time. It was just a matter of getting it done, putting my head down, doing the work and trying to get back as quickly as possible.” Which he did, making it back for a couple of scratch matches in the Gold Coast hub, then the final round game against St Kilda. “That was good. We were out of the finals race by then, which wasn’t the best, but to get back and finish the year with an AFL game rather than going through all that work just to play in a couple of scratchies was a good result. It was nice feeling, to finish off on a good note.”
It also stirred something in Cumming, who after four years at the GIANTS felt ready to be more than just someone sitting on the list behind others, waiting for his chance. That feeling wasn’t there in his first year, when Cumming was a skinny, raw kid out of Broken Hill; he felt only happiness watching Tim Taranto, Harry Perryman and Will Setterfield debut ahead of him because he knew he wasn’t anywhere near as ready as they were. “When I got drafted I wasn’t expecting to play in my first year, at all,” he said. “I was just happy to be there. I never even felt close.”
That year gave Cumming time to work on things: to get a bit stronger, learn how to defend and improve his running, though he didn’t really believe what the coaches were telling him about that until he was picked for his debut game in round eight of 2018. “I always thought they were a bit hard on me for my fitness, whether I could run out a game, but I remember it as clear as day: I got five minutes in and I was absolutely gassed. I played one more game after that and got dropped, but I knew I had more work to do to get my fitness up to where it had to be,” he said.
“Once I got that in place, I knew I had speed and I knew I could kick, and stuff like that. I still had some things to work on with my defending, but most of all I had to get fit. A couple of preseasons helped with that and then when I got into my third year I just wanted to play, I wanted to be in the team.
"I was travelling emergency a lot, emergency for the finals. We made the grand final and I was thinking ‘far out, I’m sick of being the 23rd player, I’m sick of being emergency.’ That’s when the switch flicked for me, in 2019. That’s when I thought I really have to knuckle down and work my way into the side rather than being the one who always ends up on the fringe or always ends up just outside it. I just got sick of that being me.”
There were still some things to work on, or push past. Cumming worked harder than ever leading into 2020. For the first time ever he made the round one side, only to be dropped after round two and then hurt his hamstring. He hadn’t yet been able to shake one thing: a feeling of apprehension before and in the early stages of games that if he did something wrong he’d dropped again. “You almost make it happen, when you think like that,” he said. “It’s like you play in fear of it. I definitely had that last year, I was half waiting to make a mistake and be dropped again.”
This year, that’s changed. Cumming grabbed his spot again and has held it. He’s played in every single game so far. He hasn’t been dropped once and he has added run, rebound, speed and skill to the GIANTS’ recast backline. He’s settled in alongside Nick Haynes and Lachie Whitfield, Sam Taylor, Phil Davis, Sam Reid and Perryman, who have been there a while now. But he has also emerged alongside Connor Idun, Jack Buckley and more recently James Peatling, who like him had to wait their turn and develop away from the senior side. “It’s been fun. We’ve had a lot of clarity with our roles and then we just try to bring energy, get around each other, help each other out,” Cumming said. “If you look around the backline this year, last year half of us were in the magoos together, playing scratchies and in 12 v 12s, playing for other teams some weeks. There’s some boys who’ve had to work really hard to get to where they are now.”
For Cumming, watching Heath Shaw retire and then Williams move to Carlton at the end of the season gave him confidence that greater opportunity would be there for him this year. But he also wanted to make sure he took it. In round one against St Kilda, a little bit of that old fear was still there. By round two, there was less of it. And then in round three against Melbourne, Cumming felt confident to take more kicks, take trickier kicks, and to run and create.
“I had a really good preseason this year, so I was ready to go. And I was really motivated. Last year I remember thinking I was stiff to get dropped when I did, that I should have been given a bit longer. I got upset about it but this year my mindset changed. This year I came in thinking, ‘forgot that, it’s up to me, I have to make sure that doesn’t happen again,” he said.
“I had a lot of motivation not just to play and get a game, but make sure that I played well and not drop the ball like I did last year. I think it probably helped me to have a few players leave, but I also think I’m a lot more mature this time around. I know round one spots are hard to come by, let alone keep, and once I had one, I didn’t want a repeat of last year’s effort.
“I knew if I played a few in a row I’d start to settle and find my feet, and in the Melbourne game I just started to feel more comfortable, to want the ball in my hands. There were kicks I would normally hit at twos level but was worried about stuffing up, and during that game I started to take more of them and hit some good ones and feel like I could do the things I was good at.
“At first my motivation was not to get dropped, and from there it’s just become doing the things I’m good at, building my confidence and being a part of this backline and part of this team. I used to live in fear thinking I’d be axed if I didn’t play a good first quarter but now I go out there and play a lot more freely than I did when I first got in, see what I can do, see what we can do, and have some fun. It’s been the most fun year of footy I’ve ever played in.
“Obviously if I could go back and change how I went about things early on I would, but in saying that, there’s been some lessons to look back on along the way. I had some work to do on my game and had to stop telling myself I was ready when I actually wasn’t ready at all. It was frustrating at the time, but now that I’m here I feel like I’ve worked pretty hard for it, like a lot of us have. It’s given me some good perspective and some things to go and deal with. And it’s taken a while, but all of it’s been beneficial. It’s all helped get me to where I am now.”
