He changed my life with four words
JAMIE CARRAGHER’S TRIBUTE TO RONNIE MORAN
RONNIE MORAN changed the shape of my career. Before the first leg of the FA Youth Cup final in 1996, the Liverpool team I was playing in had a selection issue.
Eddie Turkington, our central defender, was suspended and Steve Heighway and Hughie McAuley, our coaches, were wondering who would fill the gap. But Ronnie Moran had an idea.
‘Play Carra in there,’ he told Steve and Hughie. ‘He’ll end up as a centre half, him.’
I’d never played in that position and I never spoke to him about it.
But because Ronnie, with his eye for detail and encyclopaedic knowledge of the game, had said it, Steve and Hughie said they trusted his view implicitly.
So that’s where I ended up in the game at Upton Park. We won 2-0, I was man of the match and my life as a Liverpool player was completely altered.
Seven months later, I made my first senior start and scored in a 3-0 win against Aston Villa. I got booked that day after 20 seconds and when we got into the dressing room at half-time, Ronnie had something to say.
‘Best thing that happened to you, that yellow card,’ he said. ‘It was the only thing that calmed you down!”
That was the thing about Ronnie. When he spoke, you listened to every word. I spent my first two years as a senior player behind him on the bench, listening to his instructions and his orders and the arguments he had with the opposition bench.
I continued to see him regularly after he retired in 1998 as he lived not far from me. He was just a man for whom I had the utmost respect and admiration.
He was Liverpool FC, 100 per cent. Nothing else mattered.