John Callinan: ‘We were bould! The word ‘demand’ was on the first page six times — mostly in capital letters’

John Callinan — not Johnny, as Michael O’Hehir christened him — was a rock star on the great Clare hurling teams that just came up short in the late ‘70s. He’s not as boisterous as some of his colleagues from that and other Clare eras, but in his quiet way, Callinan has always been a rebel too

John Callinan in Ennis this week. ‘You look at the team of the late 1990s and, nearly to a man, all of them at some stage have been willing to get involved somewhere in the Clare system but almost none of them are involved now.’ Picture: Eamon Ward

"When we were being shouldered up through the village, I spotted John and Eamon Callinan alongside O’Meara’s shop, opposite his mother’s pub where Johnny grew up himself. You could see how emotional Callinan was. I got emotional too."

- Anthony Daly, 1995