Eamonn Callaghan following in the footsteps of enigma Johnny McDonald

STILL GOING STRONG: Naas footballer Eamonn Callaghan, 39, was inspired by fellow club man Johnny McDonald yet took a different approach to the game, wringing every last ounce of potential out of his career. Picture: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile

One of Mick O’Dwyer’s first tasks after being appointed Kildare manager in 1990 was to attend the county final, to scout for talent.

Naas beat Clane that September day, winning their first title since 1932 in front of a 12,000 strong crowd and, as it turned out, their last until just a few weeks ago when Eamonn Callaghan and his colleagues finally got the job done again.

O’Dwyer was taken by the stunning point scoring performance of young Naas forward Johnny McDonald in that 1990 decider and called him in for county trials the following week.

Gifted but enigmatic and rarely a disciplinarian — McDonald told the Kildare Nationalist newspaper in a fascinating life and times interview that he was ‘sent off for being drunk’ in the Kildare U21 final of 1990, months before O’Dwyer took over — the Naas sharpshooter turned up to O’Dwyer’s trial with no boots.

“Had to get a loan of a pair of boots actually, off James Finlay, they were size 11 and I’m a size nine,” he told the Nationalist.

Truth be told, McDonald could probably have delivered magic in a pair of ill-fitting clogs and having earned O’Dwyer’s seal of approval, he played for Kildare a few months later in the 1991 National League final against Dublin at Croke Park, a game ultimately decided by a fluke Vinnie Murphy goal.

He played and scored against Dublin in the 1992 and 1993 Leinster finals too, inspiring a young Callaghan in Naas but just when things were getting interesting under O’Dwyer his career suddenly fizzled out.

“I think ‘97 was his last year playing with Kildare,” said Callaghan. “I think he actually got sent off against Laois that summer. I think that was his last game, I’m pretty sure.”

Callaghan is almost right. McDonald was dismissed against Laois following an off- the-ball incident early in the game but he returned to line out against Meath in the first of their three in a row of Leinster Championship encounters that summer. He was taken off in the first drawn game with Meath and didn’t feature in the replay or second replay. And that was that. Finished with Kildare in his 20s.

A few weeks later, he hit for Venezuela to teach English. He wasn’t home long when he took off again, this time for Chicago.

He left behind a Kildare team that caught lightning in a bottle in 1998 and reached a first All-Ireland final in 63 years. Could he have been the difference that September, the man that hauled Kildare over the winning line against Galway?

“The best natural finisher I came across in Kildare was Johnny McDonald but I wasn’t able to get the level of commitment from him that was required and he faded from the scene,” wrote O’Dwyer in his autobiography Blessed and Obsessed.

“It was an awful pity because he was a fine talent with a natural scoring instinct but you need more than that to make it at the highest level. I don’t know if Johnny ever realised how much skill he had or how much he could have achieved.”

Callaghan concurs.

“Yeah, God, there was definitely more in him, he definitely could have played on for a lot of years after, even with Kildare.

He would have been a huge loss for Kildare at the time because he was so strong and direct, so fast. A brilliant footballer.”

It’s a tale worth recounting as Naas head to Croke Park this afternoon for their first ever AIB Leinster club final, led by Callaghan, a 39-year-old still going strong. He was inspired by McDonald yet took a different approach to the game, wringing every last ounce of potential out of himself across several decades of service.

It was only after 17 seasons with Kildare that ex-captain Callaghan finally called it quits in 2018. He cuts himself some slack these days and enjoys an occasional treat — I’d have the odd takeaway and drink the odd can of Coke Zero here and there — but touching 40 the father-of-two is still chasing improvement as a player.

“Definitely yeah,” he nodded. “I remember in my last couple of years with Kildare, I would have looked at Andy Moran. He was flying, he got player of the year one year. He was in his mid-30s with Mayo and I would have been playing in a similar position. I remember looking at him and just the way he played and I would have tweaked a few things from that.”

That’s not to say that Callaghan isn’t a free spirited, maverick performer at times himself. McDonald would have been proud of the skillset displayed by the veteran, for example, when kicking points from play off both his left and right feet in the Leinster semi-final win over Shelmaliers before Christmas at Croke Park.

It turns out their Naas careers did intersect briefly too, back in the early 2000s.

“When I was a teenager growing up, he was the man,” said Callaghan. “Everyone talked about him, he was a club legend and he was brilliant for Kildare when he was playing with them.

“When I started playing senior with the club, I think he had just left, he had gone to America but he came back for a couple of years when we won the intermediate (2004) so I got to play with him for a couple of years, that was great.”

A story popped up in the Leinster Leader in 2017 about a local farmer whose cow had just had three calves.

“It’s a one in a million occurrence,” the newspaper claimed, “and it happened to former Kildare footballer Johnny McDonald.”

Still making headlines for rare deeds after all these years, just like Callaghan.