FINAL PAY-OFF
Callanan is eager to fulfil his goals between the posts for the Tribesmen’s
THAT first evening, Colm Callanan was a wreck. He sat into his car and has a memory of not being able to turn the key in the ignition.
He finally got moving, but only as far as the nearest petrol station, which in the circumstances was more of an aid station.
‘I got two bottles of Lucozade and I absolutely necked them,’ he remembers. ‘I sat there for another 10 minutes and then drove home in sheer shock. I was thinking, “I never want to see that man again”.’
He couldn’t have known it then, but it was the first day of the rest of his sporting life.
The man was Christy O’Connor, journalist, author, former Clare goalkeeper and noted coach. Callanan was not the Galway keeper when they first worked together. The context was, instead, his club Kinvara.
Up to then, the idea of specialist training for the most specialised position on the field had not percolated through hurling, certainly through to the club game.
‘This was all new to me, this stuff,’ Callanan says now. ‘I just did whatever the outfield players in the club did.’
O’Connor now works with the Galway goalkeepers as part of the Micheál Donoghue support team, and Callanan earns a living as a fitness trainer based in Kinvara. But he marvels still, even at a remove of 10 years, at the shock of being immersed into a regime dedicated to him and the skills his position demanded.
‘It was at such a different level. I wasn’t used to that at all. It was just a totally different level. It was a bit of a shock to the system.’
Within months, owing to his club displays, Callanan got a call from Ger Loughnane. It was late spring in 2007 and Liam Donoghue, Aidan Ryan and James Skehill were the established goalkeeping set under Loughnane.
By the end of the summer, it was Callanan starting in an All-Ireland quarter-final against Kilkenny in Croke Park. It was his first time playing in the most famous stadium in the country.
‘I still find it the same now: mentally, once you get on the pitch, it’s nearly a relief,’ he says. ‘Everything is removed. It’s go-time. I don’t find that hard or a distraction, at all, to be honest. I want to get out on the pitch, out of the dressing room, as quickly as possible.
‘You’re playing against Kilkenny. You’re not standing there looking up at the stand saying, “Jesus, this is great, isn’t it?”
‘Maybe for a minute or two during the warm-up or the parade you’ll have a look around, but once the game is on, it’s showtime. It’s a different mind-set.’ He was 25 years of age that summer, but his inter-county story is not an arrowstraight narrative, concluding today, with his third involvement in an All-Ireland final. Skehill, a distant cousin, wore the jersey for 2008, before Callanan was favoured for 2009 and 2010. At the end of 2011, Anthony Cunningham let him go from the squad after being chosen as the new county manager. Callanan was 29 and designs on a life in maroon looked fanciful. ‘Pretty much,’ he nods. ‘James has five years on me. Fergal Flannery was brought in, he was younger again. So, you’re thinking Anthony is going to be there for whatever number of years and you’re thinking this is the end of the line now. ‘I was resigned to that train of thought, I won’t lie. I got my foot back in the door alright and thankfully I was able to make a go of it again.’ The circumstances of his return were extraordinary. Two nights before the final replay in 2012, Skehill injured his shoulder in training. Knowing he was a doubt for the re-fixture, Cunningham asked Callanan back into the panel to provide cover.
Skehill started the final but was replaced at half-time by Flannery. Callanan watched on as Kilkenny tore Galway asunder, officially a squad member on the day but feeling as removed as any supporter. ‘I didn’t really feel part of it,’ he remembers. ‘I couldn’t. There were players involved I didn’t really know. I didn’t know the management team. I knew their names; that was it. So, I didn’t really feel part of the thing. It was a funny situation really. But it did lend itself to getting involved the following year. ‘I was on the bench with the subs (in Croke Park). I was part of the warm-up. James wasn’t 100 per cent. I was basically third choice. If a change was made I was bumped up to 16.
‘It would have been a fair turn of events if I had ended up playing coming from third choice. At the same time I had to be ready.’
When Galway returned to the final in 2015, Cunningham’s last season in charge, Callanan was established as the first pick.