Rough diamond Callanan begins to provide Tipp sparkle

Raymie Ryan remembers first clapping eyes on the "impatient, talented young fella" that was Séamus Callanan when he took over as manager of Drom & Inch ahead of the 2007 campaign.

Ryan, a Munster club medallist with Cashel King Cormacs in 1991, was a hell of player himself in his day and recognised a rough diamond when he saw one.

Ryan decided that it was time to set Callanan free. He was 18 at the time and the holder of an All-Ireland minor medal. But Ryan decided that it was time to release Callanan from the club confines of corner-forward.

And during the 2007 club season, Callanan was on fire at centre-forward as Drom & Inch went all the way to the county final.

Callanan’s excellent form earned him a call-up to the county squad and he would make his debut against Cork in the 2008 Munster semi-final, scoring three points from play.

In his next five championship outings, he scored a goal a game, including one against Clare in the Munster final. But Ryan wasn’t happy.

“I was disappointed with him that day,” he says. “It was the only time I was disappointed with him because he could have ended up with 3-10, he was so good. He got complacent finishing up — he could have got a hell of a lot more. I was actually mad with him — he underachieved in that final.”

Ryan and Callanan enjoyed that sort of relationship. If Ryan felt Callanan could be doing more, he’d tell him.

Former national director of hurling Paudie Butler was one of Callanan’s earliest mentors with Drom & Inch.

He remembers a “very slight” kid, dependent on speed. But Butler notes how Callanan has “grown into a very big man now”.

He’s 6ft 3ins tall and capable of winning his own ball and that makes an awful difference, according to Butler.

He adds: “His graph might not be in a straight line, maybe a little bit up and down, but the rise is there all the time when you look back on it.”

Callanan scored two points after coming off the bench against Kilkenny in the 2010 decider, and bagged 2-10 in the successful Munster championship campaign of the following summer. But when Tipp and Kilkenny met again in the September decider, Callanan was taken off at half-time and his relationship with manager Declan Ryan was fractured.

Callanan’s entire 2012 championship season totalled 24 minutes and approaching the start of the 2013 season, a player who had bagged a career championship total of 8-35 to that point had managed just 0-2 in his previous four summer outings.

2013 yielded six points from two games against Limerick and Kilkenny (four frees in the Limerick game and two from play against the Cats) and against that background, Callanan’s consistency levels this year have been staggering. But his ability to sustain those levels is no surprise to those who know him best.

Raymie Ryan remembers another cameo moment from 2007, against Killenaule in the county semi-final, when Callanan showed opposition keeper Gerry Kennedy the eyes before flashing a shot from 20m into the opposite top corner.

And at inter-county level, Callanan is a prolific, if streaky, goalscorer.

In 28 games, he has raised 15 green flags, averaging out at almost one every two games, and has scored seven this summer alone. And Butler believes there’s more to come.

“It’s a great time for a person to be coming to his great years. Coming too soon is very hard on people. I think he’s a lot luckier that he’s coming now. He has matured and he’s about the game now, about mastery of the game and mastery of the position. Now the pressure is off him to a large extent.”

Ryan agrees: “He seems to have found his confidence, like a lot of inter-county forwards do in their mid-20s. The same with Richie Hogan at the moment, on and off the team a lot, corner-forward in the 2011 All-Ireland final. Now he’s middle of the field and he’s probably on his way to being Hurler of the Year, maybe.”

The ‘maybe’ provokes another smile from Ryan, because there’s another leading contender for that accolade. That impatient teenager Ryan helped to mould has now become a man.