‘I never wanted fame or money, I just wanted to play for Ireland’
Injury cut short a once-promising career but Moore still scaled Premier League heights
THE passing of a world icon last week hit one Dubliner in particular. “Maradona died on my birthday,” says Alan Moore, a former Ireland international and Premier League player with Middlesbrough, himself one of the gifted players from this country of his generation. “I watched the World Cup in ‘86 where Maradona was my hero. When he passed on my birthday, I looked through the messages on my phone and they were all about Maradona. He was the reason I played football.”
There appears to be little to link the genius from Buenos Aires with a boy from Finglas whose elite-level career was limited, mainly through injury, to a spurt of 35 Premier League games and eight caps between 1993 and 1999, though Moore did, of course, see out his career back home in the League of Ireland and tasted European success with Shelbourne.
But if the 1986 World Cup success was the crowning moment of Maradona’s career, then international football was also the unquestioned peak for Moore, now 45 and working as opposition analyst for League One side Wigan.
“I’d seen that World Cup in
‘86 but then I had Euro ‘88, Ireland beating England, those memories, that was what I wanted, I wanted to see the bunting up on my street,” Moore says now.
“I didn’t play football for money, to be in the Premier League, for the fame, I never liked the fame. I just wanted to play for Ireland. We all have goals and dreams: my dream was just to play for Ireland. When I’d write stories in school, they were always about playing in the World Cup for Ireland. That was my driving force, how I got there didn’t bother me, I just had to get there.”
Moore got there, in 1996, winning the first of eight caps in a seven-month spell under Mick McCarthy, but there was a lot of hard work and effort to get there. Signed by Middlesbrough from Dublin club Rivermount, Moore finally landed his Premier League debut in April 1993, a sub in a defeat at home to Everton.
“My debut was a big deal for me. I didn’t do particularly well when I did get on but it was a sigh of relief to get on,” after 13 games as an unused sub.
He played once more that season, also a sub, in a 3-3 draw with Norwich when Boro’ were already relegated and he recalls picking up an injury as he struggled with the pace of the game. “I remember thinking that day ‘I won’t let that happen to me again, I am going to work hard’,” he says.
Fitter
“So I went back to Dublin and worked my socks off over the summer, I was with Darren Grogan, who was at Spurs and who I knew from Rivermount. I’d had a taste of it with those two sub appearances and I wanted to be able to stay around, I wanted more of it, so I had a really good off-season in Dublin, came back fitter than ever.”
The arrival of Bryan Robson as player/manager before the 1994/’95 season was a sign of Boro’s intent and, with Moore a regular in the side but in a central role after starting out as a wide player, they were promoted back to the Premier League.
Across two thrilling Premier League seasons (1995-’97) Boro were a joy to watch, competing in the league and also enjoying cup runs. Moore made 29 appearances, where staying in the side was a feat given the resources available at the time. “You had to work hard to stay in the team as we had the financial clout to sign just about anyone we wanted, Emerson and Juninho and those lads and you had to be so strong in training every day to get in ahead of those lads,” he says.
Even now some games stand out, like the only red card of his Premier League career, in a 3-2 loss at home to Arsenal. “I elbowed a lad in the face, maybe I thought I was back at Rivermount, as I learned at a young age at Rivermount that you needed to look after yourself,” he says.
There were also battles with Manchester United. “United were always a class above, I always remember those games, Roy tried to smash me one day in central midfield, I just said to him ‘Roy, I know you from the FÁS course back home, why would you do that?” he says.
“And every time I’d come up against Denis Irwin he’d say ‘take it easy on me today, Moorsey, don’t try and go past me’. United were a class above the rest, Chelsea and Liverpool were still big clubs but United had it all then. But we were good too.”
He didn’t know it but time would be called on his Premier League career early: Moore, now dogged by injury, made just four appearances in the 1998/’99 season, his last in a 0-0 draw at home to Spurs in February 1999.
“I was in a big battle at the end, in my last five years at Middlesbrough I played eight games. Even my last game, against Spurs, I broke my ankle 15 minutes in, I played on as long as I could, I was afraid to come off but I had to limp off, I knew I had cracked it but I played on, I hated the idea of coming off, I hated the idea of people thinking ‘ah, he is injured again’.
“That was the battle in my mind at the time. I didn’t want to go off but I trace it back to that first op, I was never the same after.”
Leaving Boro in 2001 after a 10-year stay, he played on, lining out for Burnley, where he was reunited with former Boro team-mate Paul Gascoigne. “We had some great players in that chang
ing room and they were good people, and Gazza had a heart of gold. He was more or less finished when he came to Boro’ but he still had something. He was such a great lad and I was at Burnley later when he came there. He’d do anything for anyone.”
Another Finglas man, Pat Fenlon, used his links to lure Moore back to Dublin and Shelbourne in 2004, where he starred in title wins and that memorable European run, in the Champions League. Moore enjoyed his new-found status as elder statesman.
“Even though I was only 27 I enjoyed that, showing the likes of Wes Hoolahan what it takes, that it’s not just showing up on a Friday night, it’s what you do every day during the week, how you live your life.”
Moore carried on his career, lining out briefly for Derry City and Sligo Rovers before retiring in 2008. “I was ready to go, I knew my body and I’d had 10 years of hardship by them, I was never getting back to those levels and I knew there was life after football so I was happy to go and I moved on to something new. In my mind I was prepared for it, it wasn’t a shock,” he says.
Moore returned to England, did work at academy level with Carlisle United
and Bury but was not enjoying it and is happier in his new role opposition analyst for Wigan.
The form he showed early in his career had Moore marked out for greatness and only for injury, who knows what he could have achieved but he was never able to fulfl that potential.
“My career was basically finished at 22, once I got my first injury that was the end of me being able to play at the top level. I tried to come back and did play but I knew I was never the same, the first operation I had took a lot out of me and it dragged me down, I was only ever able to get back to a certain level,” he says.
But the time spent with Ireland, however brief ( just those eight caps, all in 1996) remains in a memory which was jogged by a lockdown-related scour of the attic for memorabilia by his mother.
“For me, playing in the Ireland matches was the highlight, that was what I was always aiming for, everything else like the Premier League and the cup runs, that was all geared to getting into the Ireland squad. International football was my goal, and those were the days when I was actually caught in the headlights, when I was training with the likes of Niall Quinn and Roy Keane and Paul McGrath, that was the first time I looked around and said, these are the people I looked up to, the reason I played football. My aim was always to get to that level.”
‘I didn’t want another few years with the knees getting sore or picking up injuries’