The President, Board, staff and members of the Collingwood Football Club would like to express their sadness at the passing of former player Chris Curran.

Curran played 34 senior games for the Magpies between 1995 and 1998, and won the club’s Joseph Wren Memorial Trophy as its reserves best-and-fairest in 1994.

A diligent player who played with a team-first approach, Curran was often used through the midfield, where he had the ability to tag a key opponent out of the game or win his own ball and push forward to impact the scoreboard.

Curran learned his football in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, where he played juniors with both Boronia and Wantirna. He joined Richmond’s under 19s team during his mid-teenage years, playing for the Tigers’ underage side at the tender age of 15.

Richmond added him to its senior list when he was 16, and he finished runner-up in the reserves team’s best-and-fairest despite playing only half the season. Unfortunately a senior berth eluded him – four hamstring injuries made sure of that.

Moved on by the Tigers, Curran began training with VFA club Box Hill, only to find out he had been added to Collingwood’s supplementary list ahead of the 1994 season.

In a far cry from the way draftees learn their footballing futures in 2018, Curran learned he had been recruited by the Magpies when he picked up his morning newspaper.

“I don’t remember too much about it,” Curran told Collingwood Media in 2012.

“I just remember it was Peter Daicos’ last pre-season. He didn’t play that year, but I remember going on the ground and training with Daicos and all those blokes and just thinking that this is a bit surreal because I didn’t even expect to be down there.”

Winning the reserves’ best-and-fairest in ’94, he was added to the senior list through a pre-draft supplementary selection ahead of the 1995 season.

Curran debuted against Geelong in round three amidst a challenging start to the year that yielded only one win from the first six games.

One of those six games, though, drew a crowd of 94,825 on ANZAC Day at the MCG. It was the first of the now traditional public holiday blockbusters between Collingwood and Essendon, and a 20-year-old Curran spent much of it watching from the interchange bench.

“They were the old days of footy,” he mused during an interview with Collingwood Media in 2016.

“You look at all the rotations with the bench now, but when I played it was a bit different. You stayed on the bench for a little bit longer.

“My first game was in Geelong the week prior, and I stayed on the bench for two and a half quarters before coming on and playing pretty well.

“(Coach) Leigh Matthews said ‘Next week, we’ll start you in the middle’. I played for 15 minutes and then sat on the bench for the last three quarters. It was a little bit different to today’s footy.

“I was very fortunate that I got to play in the first ANZAC Day match. It’s different now with all the substitutes and rotations, so I probably would have got more of a go, but if you ask anyone if they had played their second game of footy in front of 90,000 people, it’s a pretty good experience.

Curran would play 10 games in 1995 before adding a further nine in 1996, highlighted by his 26-disposal, one-goal performance against the Bombers, again on ANZAC Day in front of another enormous crowd.

“It was probably the first time where I felt part of the team, like I had earned my spot in the team,” he said.

“I have watched the match a few times on video. I was tagging Joe Misiti and Mark Mercuri at the time. It was probably the best game I played.

“We were about six goals down in the first quarter and we just gradually came back.

“I kicked it to ‘Bucks’ and he put us in front, and then I kicked a goal after that. Mum and dad were crying in the stands. It was probably the best game I’d ever played in.

“At the end of the day, Stan Magro (assistant coach) and Tony Shaw (coach) came up and shook my hand and said ‘You’re part of it, mate’. That was probably a turning point for me. It was a really good game.”

Curran finished off the ’96 season by playing the final four home and away matches and continued on in 1997, playing in each of the first 12 games before injury struck.

He fired early, kicking two from 19 disposals against Port Adelaide in the opening round, before following it up with another two goals and 24 disposals against Melbourne the following Friday night.

A week later, he played arguably the best of his 34 games, tagging St Kilda champion Robert Harvey while collecting 31 disposals and a goal of his own in a seven-point loss at Waverley Park.

“In that game against St Kilda I started to grow into that tagging role in that game against Harvey and even though I was tagging I started to get the ball myself and kick a few goals,” he recalled.

“It was just unfortunate that these runs came to an end with injuries and stuff.”

Those injuries involved knees, feet, hamstrings and a broken jaw against Melbourne’s reserves team in round 17.

“I was just coming back from another injury in the seconds down at Punt Road and then one of the Cockatoo-Collins boys gave a handball off and I was just watching where the ball was and he just kept running and shattered my jaw, so that was pretty painful. That was a good 10 weeks on the sidelines.

“I probably could have come back for the last few games but because I had lost so much weight and my jaw was still pretty sore, I just sat out for the rest of the year.

“My jaw is fine now; I’ve just got a couple of plates in there. It was my foot and my knee that made me retire in the end.”

Unfortunately for Curran, that retirement came just 12 months later at the age of 23.

He played against the Western Bulldogs in round three before returning against Adelaide and Brisbane mid-season, only to decide it was time to give his injured foot a rest.

“The foot was there since I was 15. They just misdiagnosed it at the time,” he said.

“Throughout my career I had a couple of operations on it and it just never healed. So even though I had all those other knee and jaw injuries, the foot was always the worst.

“In the last two years I was playing, I was doing mostly rehab. I didn’t train much and was always in the gym or on the bike or in the pool and just before a game I’d get a jab to take the pain away. I played for about two years with injections and couldn’t feel the foot.

“At the start of the year I had a hamstring injury again. I came back against the Dogs, and obviously was pretty unfit but managed to get back in the team for a couple of games and in the end the last game was against Brisbane.

“I just went and saw Shawry, Stan Magro and Danny Frawley and because I couldn’t train, I had no fitness and couldn’t kick. Even with the painkillers in my foot I just couldn’t turn and run properly and I just said to them I can’t keep playing like this.

“I went and got the foot checked out and the screws that were in there had snapped in half and caused a bit of damage. I just hung up the boots halfway through the year.

“It was my decision. Basically during the week after a game when the painkillers had worn off, I was in agony and could hardly walk. That’s why I didn’t train very much, and I was 23 at the time and I could hardly walk then so I thought, my football’s going nowhere, I can’t run, I can’t kick, and I can’t play on painkillers for the next 10 years.”

Curran spent the next year at the club working with the fitness staff before leaving Victoria Park, bound for a career in personal training and later in teaching.

Curran listed Lee Walker, Luke Godden, Scott Crow and Shane Watson as among his closest Collingwood friends, and finished his career with a 50 per cent winning record from his 34 senior games.

Those games included three ANZAC Days, Port Adelaide’s first game in the AFL and other blockbusters against Carlton, Richmond and Melbourne, meaning Curran’s lasting memories of his biggest days in Black and White were tinted with gold.

“That’s what’s so good about Collingwood,” he said back in 2016.

“In the five years I played there, we weren’t starring, but you would always play in front of 40,000, 60,000 or even 90,000.

“No matter where we were, we would always draw a crowd.

“It was a privilege to play for the club.”

The club would like to extend its deepest sympathies to the Curran family.

Collingwood Forever.

Chris Curran
Born: 3 August 1974
Height: 178cm
Weight: 76kg
Recruited from: Boronia / Richmond / Box Hill
AFL debut: Round Three 1995 v Geelong at Kardinia Park
Final AFL game: Round 14 1998 v Brisbane at the Gabba
Games: 34
Goals: 14
Honours: Joseph Wren Memorial Trophy (reserves best-and-fairest) 1994