MY COL OF DUTY
Callanan answered Tribe SOS to come in from cold five years ago and now he’s the undisputed No.1
IT’S more than six years now since Colm Callanan effectively drew a line under his county career.
He’d arrived home from Athlone one evening in late 2011 when he took a call from the recently appointed Galway senior hurling boss Anthony Cunningham, who told him he was going with James Skehill and Fergal Flannery as his goalkeepers for the season. They were a few years younger than Callanan, 29 at that time, and he didn’t expect to hear from Cunningham (right) again, even if the usual platitudes about keeping an eye on his club form with Kinvara were trotted out.
at it, Anthony was going to be there for however long, three or four years at least anyway, so in that regard I said, ‘My goose is cooked here’,” Callanan admitted.
He didn’t attend any Galway games in 2012 and wasn’t really missed on the field. They claimed a historic Leinster title and reached the All-ireland final, where they drew with Kilkenny.
“I’d have found it hard to go to the game and knowing the lads so well and being so part of it, to be sitting down in the Hogan – I’d probably have found that pretty hard.
“I didn’t go to any game that year. I felt I’ll just watch whatever games are on TV.
“Like I said, I was probably resigned to the fact that inter-county was finished for me so I very much went back to the mode of playing with the club and enjoying a few things that I couldn’t do in the years previously, like go out on a Saturday night or go away for weekends, things like that.
“Things I wouldn’t have got away with in the years before.”
He was making plans to at “looking tend the All-ireland final replay that year, however, when he received a much more welcome call this time from Cunningham the Friday night before the game.
Skehill suffered a recurrence of a shoulder injury at training that night and was a major doubt.
“They were in a bit of strife, as James had got injured, so what are you going to say only that you’ll go and see.
“It’s no time to be carrying a grudge or anything. It’s an All-ireland final and your county are in it after six or seven years of playing with those fellas.
“Of course I was going to go in; I’d little or no role on the day apart from being there and taking part in the warm-up.
“If it was a thing that
James didn’t make it or whatever at the start of the game I was going to be bumped up to sub keeper.”
He didn’t see action that day but Skehill’s injury was a catalyst for Callanan emerging as the county’s number one goalkeeper and one of the most consistent netminders in the game today.
He won an All-star in 2015, the first for a Galway ‘keeper in 26 years, and, having reclaimed his starting spot in July 2013 and held it ever since, was one of the mainstays as Galway finally ended their 29-year Allireland drought last September.
“Year on year looking at teams and captains climbing the steps… you think you can imagine what they’re feeling and everything that goes with it and really until you go through it yourself you’re thinking, ‘Jesus, I was way off, this is absolutely unbelievable’.
“You’d love to go back to those few minutes after the final whistle and do that whole thing again, those 15/20 minutes after the game is special, time of your life stuff really.”
At 35 and with a young family, the demands of running his own business and the attraction of going out on a high, he considered retirement over the winter but was never gripped by the thought.
“People say in the last 10 years it wasn’t fashionable just to win one, especially Kilkenny, you’d say, ‘How are they so hungry to go back and do it again?’
“But when you go through and you see how special it is, you wouldn’t be long understanding why you would go back and try and do it again and again.”