MORAN IS STILL THE MAN
Veteran boss Mickey closes in on further glory with Slaughtneil
ENLIGHTENED contributions can often be lost in all the noise of a GAA Congress, especially when it comes to the eternal debate about the state of Gaelic football. However, when a softly-spoken, bespectacled Derry man rose to speak at Congress in 2000, he had to be listened to.
As delegates tied themselves in knots over the scourge of the hand-pass, Mickey Moran stood and explained simply why the hand-pass wasn’t the root of all evil in the game and is a tool that can be used to help players, low on confidence, improve their skills. He drew on personal experience of working with young players. His explanation informed all of Moran’s coaching style. Ask any of the hundreds of players who have worked under him and improvement is the common theme.
He was Sligo manager at the time, and set a group of talented Yeatsmen on a voyage of improvement that almost led to an AllIreland semi-final a couple of years after he left them. More than a decade and a half later, via Donegal, Derry, Mayo and Leitrim, Gaelic football’s great survivor will stalk the Croke Park sideline this afternoon, hoping to lead Slaughtneil to an emotional All-Ireland title against Dr Crokes of Kerry.
As much as it will be a fitting conclusion to Slaughtneil’s fairytale year, it will also be just reward for Moran, a retired schoolteacher, who’s life work has centred around making football teams better.
He was still in his teens when he took on his first coaching job, with his native club, Glen.
A decade later in 1980, Moran, at only 29, became Derry manager while still a player with his county. Famously, it’s said that Moran played every position for the Oak Leaf county — even goalkeeper when Derry travelled to a League match in the early 1970s without a substitute keeper and he was called into action. His greatest coaching moment also came with his native county, as he was part of Eamonn Coleman’s management team for Derry’s break-through in the 1993 AllIreland final. He managed Derry twice more himself. Got Sligo to a Connacht final, an AllIreland quarter-final with a talented Donegal side with notorious discipline issues. He took Mayo, too, to an All-Ireland final in 2006, via a remarkable comeback win over Dublin in the semi-final. And spent three years, doing thankless work with Leitrim.
But that’s only at county level. There are players, the length and breath of Ireland, who have been coached by Moran. At clubs and schools level, he has been involved in countless teams and there’s a suggestion that no other individual in GAA history has coached so many different teams. And he is likely to have improved them all, in some small way.
Moran had just been appointed for a fourth year as Leitrim boss in 2011 when he was forced to step down for health reasons. A routine check-up had shown up a heart problem and he had a triple by-pass. It was thought that would spell the end of his days in management.
But once Moran got back to full health, the desire to improve footballers still burned deep within him.
He answered the call from Slaughtneil and the rest is history. If the small Derry club have been the GAA story of the season, with Ulster titles in football, hurling and camogie — and at least one All-Ireland title in camogie — it was the footballers who got the ball rolling under Moran a few years ago.
He led them to their first Derry title in a decade and two Ulster titles in three years. And Chrissy McKaigue, who is the heartbeat of the Slaughtneil side that is back in Croke Park this afternoon determined to make up for the heartache of 2015 against Corofin, summed up Moran’s influence.
‘As a club, sometimes we can become a little too passionate in Slaughtneil and Mickey’s biggest trait is that he is just so calm, cool and collectected about everything,’ McKaigue said of Moran. ‘He calms us all down and keeps us on a level path.
‘And we listen to everything he has to say. He is a wise, old head because he has been around the block and done it all before. There’s no doubt about it, what he has done and the model he has created for our club will leave a lasting legacy.’
If Slaughtneil beat Dr Crokes this afternoon, Mickey Moran’s legacy at the club will be clear. But they are only the latest group of players that Moran has got the best out of in a coaching odyssey that has lasted almost 40 years.