A Different View with Dave O’Connell

The death of former Galway Rovers player/manager Tommy Callaghan on the morning of the club’s last home game of the season last Friday was greeted with sadness by those who remembered the fledgling days of League of Ireland football in Galway.

But thanks to two people in particular, Tommy’s story was also remembered with greater fondness – because Gerry Daly and Paul O’Brien were the catalysts to right a terrible wrong done to this quiet, dignified, modest Scotsman who had left Galway back in 1979 under a cloud that was not of his making.

Too often in life, we pay tribute to people after they’ve died, lamenting the fact that we didn’t tell them what they meant to us when they were alive, when we could do it to their face instead of over their coffin.

Thanks to Gerry, the former Galway Rovers and United full-back, and lifelong Galway supporter Paul, we all got to tell Tommy directly what he’d meant to the football fraternity there, and – even though the manner of his departure wasn’t down to any of us – we also got to apologise to him for that injustice too.

The gentleman that he was, he had the good grace to accept that as all sides finally got to square the circle.

He’d loved his year in Galway and bitterly regretted the speedy manner of his departure, but he couldn’t bring himself to come back for 44 years – until September of last year when he walked out onto the Terryland pitch again, to a sustained standing ovation.

Tommy Callaghan’s career was never going to be defined by his spell at Galway Rovers; how could it be? This man won six league titles with Glasgow Celtic, as well as three Scottish Cups and two League Cups.

He was one of Jock Stein’s first signings when he was manager at Dunfermline Athletic, and a year later they’d won the Scottish Cup – an achievement as unthinkable then as it would be now.

Stein went on to win the European Cup with Celtic’s Lisbon Lions – the first British club to achieve that feat – but he still wanted to strengthen that squad.

And so Tommy Callaghan became to only player to sign for Jock Stein twice when he moved to Parkhead in November 1968 for £35,000 – Celtic’s record signing, although only until Harry Hood joined for €40,000 the following March.