AWARDED Colorado Rapids Golden Boot honour this season, Jamaican international striker Omar Cummings, was switched from right flank to up front for his Major League Soccer (MLS) club to become one of the most dangerous strikers in the United States domestic league.

“I went into games thinking, ‘you’re not shooting enough,” Cummings said on the club’s website of what he did differently at the end of the year.

“And if I got an opportunity to shoot the ball and make the ‘keeper make the save, to not try to score the perfect goal, or the easy goal, and if it didn’t work, fine, but the keeper could make a mistake, or we could get a rebound, or something could happen from it.”

The 28-year-old from Old Harbour scored 14 goals this season, which equalled the previous two seasons combined.

Before the change in position, Cummings had scored five goals from 20 matches. Afterwards, he scored nine goals from nine of the 10 games played for Colorado.

“It’s not that I don’t enjoy playing on the right, I’ve also done it with the Jamaican national team. But in that stretch, we weren’t getting as many opportunities as we wanted to.

“We weren’t having the success we wanted to; teams were trying to prevent me from getting the ball and it was a little frustrating, so going back up front was a joy for me,” Cummings explained.

“When you make others adapt to you, you already change their game plan. When teams have to adapt to a Colorado playing-style, they’re already thinking about you way too much, and that’s half the battle,” he added.

In his fourth season with the Rapids, Cummings’ renewed outlook came after seeing his club miss out on the play-offs in the previous three seasons.

“One thing that was in my mind was that I didn’t want to be in the same position that we were in the last few seasons, so that was definitely a drive for me. I wanted to win games and put ourselves in the position where we were in the play-offs with games left in the season.

“This year more than any other year I saw myself as being that guy the team was looking at to be the one to score the goals, to be a leader on the team,” Cummings said.

“The responsibilities were there, so it was time to take on those responsibilities.”

Colorado Gary Smith added: “If you look at how his game has improved, you start to think about the movements that he’s making. His timing of his runs, the ability to pick out the right pass, all of those facets of his game have improved enormously the last two years.”

Meanwhile, the Rapids have moved to persuade Cummings to stay at the club amid growing international interest. The Jamaican has another two years left on his contract with the MLS franchise.

“He’s a very level-headed guy, there’s no ego in his game,” noted Smith. “And his work rate, on and off the ball, he is perpetual motion. That’s why his game is so difficult to deal with.

“He is continually making those runs and he’s also helping the team on the other side of the ball and recovering into good areas; shutting down deep midfield players and defenders to speed up play, getting on the end of turnovers and rebound that he can then take more advantage of higher up the field,” Smith praised.