LENSMAN FOCUSED ON KEEPING HIS EYE ON THE PRIZE
THROUGH the lens of his camera, Brendan Moran has pretty much seen it all at this stage.
‘Part of the furniture,’ he admits, at Sportsfile, one of Ireland’s leading sports photography agencies, the Kerryman has been taking pictures across the globe for the best part of three decades.
He has seen his fair share of World Cups (football and rugby), Olympic Games, Lions tours, big days at the Aviva and Croke Park, just to name a few.
When Andy Farrell’s Ireland kick off against Scotland in a fortnight’s time, Moran will be perched on the touchline for his 25th edition of this hallowed championship. From Brian Ashton to Warren Gatland to Joe Schmidt, he has seen coaching regimes and captains come and go with the passing of time.
On the first Saturday of February, he’ll be there in the Aviva primed to to capture the big moments.
‘Once the match kicks off, it’s every person for themselves,’ Moran explains.
‘While there will be 20 or 30 photographers at the match, everybody will be competing for the best picture.
‘Even if your colleague gets the best picture, you’d be going, “oh, I would have liked to have taken that picture.” You always hope things fall your way, but a lot of that is down to luck.
‘Even with experience, you do try to stack the odds in your favour but sometimes you could be sitting at a match and nothing might come your way for the whole game and there’s nothing you can do about it.
‘Even if it’s one moment that comes your way, you have to be prepared for it because you don’t have replays and you don’t have a second chance, so you can’t really afford to miss it.’
Moran has honed that eye for a shot over many years. He was quick to the draw back in Rio in 2016 when a clutch of photographers were waiting outside Hospital Samaritano.
Pat Hickey, the former president of the Olympic Council of Ireland, was due to be released to face questioning from the Brazilian police for alleged ticket touting.
No one knew when or where Hickey would emerge, but Moran spotted something in the distance.
‘As soon as a door opened in the car park, I could see the outline of Pat Hickey and I knew straight away that was him.
‘I shot the pictures as best I could. It was quite dark down in the car park and you can’t really see his face. There’s an element of... you know who it is because of the story and there’s the exit sign in the picture. It’s in Portuguese but it means exit.’
There was another moment of inspiration during an unforgettable European Champions Cup clash between Munster and Glasgow later that year.
As both teams lined up to honour the memory of Anthony Foley, who had passed away the previous weekend, Moran kept a close eye on the Munster players throughout the minute’s silence in Thomond Park.
During the 60 seconds, he shot a few frames of each player. He didn’t realise at the time but he had just captured an iconic shot of an emotional Simon Zebo.
‘It was only when I sat down, the match had kicked off, and I was looking through my frames, I could kind of detect something in the picture of Simon, and once I looked at in closer detail on the laptop, I knew straight away that this was an important picture.
‘In fairness, once I sent it back to the office, Ray McManus (the editor) made the decision to do a black and white version of it and it just summed it up a lot more. It’s very unusual to see that from a player just before kick-off.
‘It did prove to be an unplanned picture but it turned out to be one of the few pictures that emerged that day which marked the intensity of the occasion.
‘I was glad I was assigned to it and to have taken a picture that will stand the test of time, I suppose, is quite pleasing. It was good to be there that day to see how they honoured him.’
“You have to be
prepared for one moment”