Colleran, Enda

by Terry Clavin

Colleran, Enda (1942–2004), Gaelic footballer, was born 2 May 1942 in Moylough, Co. Galway, the fifth of six children of James Colleran, farmer, of Moylough, and his wife Ellen (née Wilson), a national school teacher. Born into a strong Gaelic football family, with three older brothers who had played for the Galway senior team, he displayed a precocious enthusiasm and aptitude for the sport. He attended the renowned football academy of St Jarlath's College, Tuam, winning with them an All‑Ireland senior colleges medal in 1960. That year he also won an All‑Ireland minor title with Galway. Encouraged by these successes and determined to attain senior inter‑county status, he worked assiduously on improving his fitness. He was enraged to be selected as a substitute and not as a starter for the Galway junior football team and refused to travel to the match in question. The county selectors swiftly forgave him and by 1961 he had broken into the Galway senior team.

During the mid 1960s, he won every honour a Gaelic footballer was capable of garnering: he collected successive Sigerson cup medals (1962, 1963) with his college UCG, latterly as captain; with his club Mountbellew (which amalgamated with two other local junior clubs for the purposes of participating at senior level), he won two Galway county senior championships (1964, 1965), a Galway county junior championship (1964) and the 1965 Connacht club championship (the final of which was not held until 1966); and in 1967 he captained Connacht to victory in the Railway Cup. His most celebrated achievements were at inter‑county level where he was a leading member of the renowned Galway side that won three All-Irelands in a row during 1964–6, being captain in 1965 and in 1966; he also won the 1965 National League and six Connacht provincial medals with Galway.

His favoured position was right corner back, but he could play anywhere in defence and in midfield. He generally played for Mountbellew in midfield, and for Galway as a right corner back, though he could be moved forward to shore up the half‑back line if it was in difficulties. A nimble and skilful footballer, he was a reliable fielder of the ball. With a prodigious, raking kick capable of propelling the ball up to sixty yards, he was typically entrusted with taking goal kicks and dead balls and was free taker for his club.

Colleran, Noel Tierney and John 'Bosco' McDermott comprised a miserly full-back line that was the decisive element in Galway's mid-1960s triumphs. He formed a formidable partnership with the towering Tierney, whom Colleran assisted by moving across from the wing into the centre to sweep up the breaking ball and to instigate rapid counter‑attacks. His greatest asset was his ability to read a game, which he displayed most memorably in the 1965 All‑Ireland semi-final against Down. Realising early in the match that the Galway backline was in danger of being overrun, he began leaving his position in a bid to assist his fellow defenders and repeatedly intercepted the ball. Modestly, he considered himself fortunate that the ball seemed to be attracted towards him, but this was a sign not of luck but of a capacity (possessed by all great defenders) for anticipating the opposition's intentions.

Though strong and sturdy, he never tried to physically intimidate opponents and always played fairly. This sportsmanlike outlook also informed his behaviour off the field: during his All‑Ireland acceptance speech in 1965 his traditional request for three cheers for the beaten Kerry team (which had resorted to roughhouse tactics in a failed bid to unsettle Galway) was met initially by a chorus of boos, but he persevered and cajoled the Galway fans into obliging.

On becoming Galway captain in 1965 (in accordance with the custom of the most senior representative of the county club champions on the county team being appointed captain for the succeeding year), he was conscious of his youthfulness, but his trepidation was soon dispelled by his continuing good form and by the goodwill of what was an unusually united team. He credited the Galway footballers' success to their coherence as a unit and the assurance that this engendered, which, combined with superior fitness, enabled them to snatch unlikely victories with late rallies. He was proud that Galway's tactics of shrewdly husbanding possession until a clear scoring opportunity emerged continued Gaelic football's evolution away from the traditional 'catch and kick' approach. (That said he felt that this culminated in the 1970s in the overuse of the hand pass and in the emergence of a running game that put fitness before skill.) His personal standing in the GAA pantheon was confirmed by his selection as right corner back in the Gaelic football teams of the century (1984) and of the millennium (2000).

Unassuming, well‑spoken and a member of the Pioneers Total Abstinence Association (later in life he was a moderate drinker), his clean‑cut profile resonated with the GAA's self‑image as the conserver of the ideals of traditional Irish manhood from nefarious foreign influences. But he was at the same time fiercely independent‑minded, and this brought him into conflict with an authoritarian GAA officialdom, which tended to take the personal sacrifices made by its amateur players for granted. In 2001, his Galway teammate Pat Donnellan revealed that he and other team members had been discontented at their treatment by the county board and particularly by the dropping of John Donnellan from the team for the 1966 All‑Ireland final, and consequently had lost interest in football. Colleran, who was a good friend of John Donnellan, seems to conform to this pattern: despite still being relatively young, his form dipped after 1966 and he retired prematurely from inter‑county football in 1970. Moreover, he was sharply critical of the accommodation and facilities provided by the GAA to the Galway football team when it travelled to New York in 1967. His vocal advocacy of the abolition of the ban on 'foreign games' imposed on GAA members earned him a public rebuke from the chairman of the Galway county board in 1968. Colleran's omission from the Galway team for the 1969 Connacht football final replay was widely attributed to a dispute with county board officials and not to his suffering from influenza (the public explanation). He regretted the precipitate dissolution (through either enforced retirement or disillusionment) of the three in a row winning side, which he believed could have gone on to win more All‑Irelands.

Following the repeal of the ban on foreign games in 1971, he joined Corinthians rugby club in Galway. Playing either on the wing or as full‑back, the kicking and handling skills acquired through Gaelic football facilitated his rapid promotion to the first team where he assumed place‑kicking duties. He won a Connacht Senior Cup medal with Corinthians in 1972. He described rugby as more of a player's game and seems to have found the sport's easy‑going sociability a welcome change from the puritanism fostered within the GAA.

Nonetheless he maintained his involvement in Gaelic football, acting as a member of the coaching staff for Mountbellew, then for the Renmore club in Galway city (which he was instrumental in establishing) from the mid 1970s and finally for the Barna club (after moving to the area c.1980). In early 1975 he was appointed head coach of the Galway football team. He undertook this position at a difficult time as morale within the county had plummeted following three All‑Ireland final defeats in four years. In his first season, Galway suffered a humiliating championship defeat at the hands of Sligo, but his dedication and emphasis on improving the squad's fitness yielded a Connacht title in 1976. Following defeat that year to Dublin in the All‑Ireland semi‑final, he was widely criticised for the spoiling tactics employed by Galway in that encounter. He resigned in 1977, believing that the players were largely lacking in commitment. During the 1980s he acted as a respected football analyst for the Sunday Game on RTÉ. In his role as pundit he aroused controversy in his native county in 1985 by predicting accurately that Galway would not win an All‑Ireland for at least another ten years, and for holding the county board culpable, particularly for its neglect of under age coaching.

After graduating BA (1965) and H.Dip.Ed. (1966) from UCG, he taught in St Enda's College in Salthill, Galway, taking a one‑year career break to work in an insurance company during the early 1990s. On retiring as a teacher in 2002, he established a successful management company. A lifelong fitness enthusiast, he enjoyed tennis and golf. He died suddenly at his home in Barna, Co. Galway, on 8 April 2004. A bronze statue in his likeness was erected in his home parish of Moylough in 2006. In 1968, he married Anne Diviney, with whom he had three sons and a daughter.