Buncrana veteran McColgan going as well as ever

Buncrana face Cloughaneely in the semi-final of the Donegal Intermediate championship this Sunday at O’Donnell Park and for one Buncrana player it is a landmark game.

Adrian McColgan is the player in question. He turned 44 this year having first played intermediate football in the green, white and gold all of 28 years ago.

“I played U12, U14 and U16 football with my homeclub Naomh Padraig, Muff,” he said this week. “Naomh Padraig didn’t have a senior team until 1998 so I started playing senior for Buncrana in 1993.

“Buncrana had a good team. I was 16 at the time and we won the Intermediate championship in 1995. I started out in the half-forward line but they moved me back to the half-back line. We had a very good run in the championship in ‘95.

“We beat Four Masters with Joyce McMullin in their team and then we beat a very strong St Michael’s in the semi-final and St Naul’s in the final.

“We had Leo McGill, Paul and Stephen McGonagle, Stephen Doherty, who is now with Letterkenny Gaels, Stephen McConnell, Ciaran Canning and James Malone. James was from Clare and he was in one of the banks in Buncrana. He was a hurler too and played for Burt and Donegal. Sean Clerkin was the manager.”

McColgan’s cousins Dermot, Liam and the late Brendan McColgan also played underage for Naomh Padraig and they all joined Buncrana too for senior football Adrian McColgan returned to Naomh Padraig in 1998 - the club's first season fielding a senior team - and was a vital cog in the team that won a first historic county title and promotion for the first time too in 2001.

The following year, 2002, he got married and moved to live in Buncrana. He continued to play with Naomh Padraig before he threw his lot in with Buncrana for a second time.

Buncrana had won the intermediate championship the year before and had risen over the years to Division Two league football.

“We played Glenfin in the senior championship in 2006,” McColgan recalls. “It was the two rounds home and away back then. We beat Glenfin in Buncrana and they beat us in Glenfin and they won the playoff.

“We were up and down between the divisions for a number of years and the last time we reached the intermediate final, in 2014, Cloughaneely beat us.”

Former Donegal minor and U21 manager Clerkin has managed and mentored McColgan down the years and he rates highly as a footballer and a man. And the former Buncrana boss insists McColgan is as good as there is.

“They picked the top 50 footballers ever here in Inishowen last year and I don’t know for the life of me how Adrian McColgan did not make the top 50,” Clerkin said. “For me when you take in longevity football skill and commitment to the game and two clubs over the last 30 years, he is my number one.

“And on top of all that he is a genuinely nice fella and a good man. I know Gary Duffy is using him off the bench this season. But he is no token sub you stick on for the last few minutes.

“Only last Sunday he came on against Fanad and he ran right through from midfield , a good 40 metres to stick the ball over the bar for the insurance point. He is a top man and is a great role model to all young footballers.”