David Moran braced for the task of locking horns with a focused Tyrone

They say nothing else matters once the ball is thrown in, although when Kerry play Tyrone on Sunday, that will not be true. David Moran, without necessarily trumpeting it, makes that perfectly clear.

There is a tendency for the teams involved in such prized contests as Sunday’s All-Ireland football semi-final to keep their most central players under wraps, or at least far away from all dictaphones.

Moran, however, is duly rolled out at Kerry’s pre-game media event, happy to talk not just about his central (ie midfield) role, but also giving some rare insight into exactly what it means to be playing Tyrone.

Now, Moran is not the sort of player to hold a grudge, although one of his first appearances in a Kerry senior jersey happened to the 2008 All-Ireland final, against Tyrone, when he was sprung from the bench, late on, in a last-ditch effort to secure a winning goal.

Tyrone won by four points.

"Yeah, I was looking for a goal, and it just didn't work out," he recalls. "Pascal McConnell pulled off an unbelievable save from Declan O'Sullivan late in that game, which I think was probably the turning point. But I remember when I first came in, marking Kevin Hughes, thinking 'this is a different ball game altogether, welcome to senior football'."

The sidelines

Fast forward four years, to the next – and last time – Kerry played Tyrone in the championship. Only this time, Moran was watching from the sidelines, a victim of back-to-back cruciate knee injuries, which forced him to sit out both the 2011 and 2012 championships.

“I think that game in Killarney, in 2012, meant a lot to Kerry,” he says. “I think even Paul (Galvin) gave a very emotional interview afterwards. I was probably at my lowest then from a personal point of view with injuries. I just thought, ‘is this ever going to happen for me?’ Kerry were going so well, it was like ‘Jesus, are you ever going to be a part of this’.”

Moran, in other words, has yet to have a full crack at Tyrone since that 2008 final, and that chance comes on Sunday. And, once that ball is thrown in, he admits Tyrone have to be treated like no ordinary team, because they simply aren’t.

Nowhere is that more evident than around midfield, as Moran himself best explains: “I must say, their kickouts the last day, against Monaghan, were very good. They dropped a lot of boys back, but as soon as Monaghan scored, they came back down the field and cancelled it out straight away.

“And that wasn’t all short kick-outs. They were kicking to men, and maybe they didn’t have two guys out, there hiking it out to them as much, but they do an awful lot of running through midfield, especially the two wing-forwards coming back. Mattie (Donnelly) is playing very well. We are under no illusion about the task we have. It will be all hands on deck. It won’t just be me, and who I am on. It won’t be the two midfielders. It will be half-backs, two midfielders, half-forwards . . .”

Unorthodox midfield

Donnelly and

Colm Cavanagh

have developed a particularly dynamic and often unorthodox midfield partnership in recent games (such as Cavanagh turning his back on the play, if or when losing the ball, as he retreats into the defence), while Moran and

Anthony Maher

would possibly prefer a more traditional midfield battle.

“Obviously, we would love to play open football,” says Moran. “But if it means we can win playing tight, compact, getting quick ball into our forwards, then we are happy. We’ve been blessed at the moment, to have such good forwards and ideally we’d like them to keep scoring but if that doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. We just need to find an alternative way to score more than them.

Big challenge

“It is going to be a big challenge. For every guy with a Kerry jersey, it’s really going to test our accuracy, our execution of all the basic skills really, it’s going to have to be very sharp. Not only to do they get men back but they’re very good tacklers. They’re very well organised, very difficult to play against.

“So I think foot-passing is going to be vital. It’ll have to be very accurate but I think if you do get it accurate, you can kick it faster than any fella can run back so if you can get the ball up there, quicker than they can run back, then it gives our forwards that extra second that they might need to get a score.”

Moran also highlights the importance of keeping tabs on Tyrone from the very start, ensuring they don’t enjoy any gains early on, which they have a clear knack of holding on to until the end. “Donegal were the same last year,” says Moran. “If they get ahead of you they’re very difficult to pin back. That’s going to be a big thing for them and I suppose if Monaghan got ahead the last day then it might have been the reverse.

“And whatever about their defensive system, they haven’t got enough credit for some of the footballers they have. Not only do they have a very good under-21 team, fellas who are very capable and skilful, they also have fellas like Seán Cavanagh who have been there, done that, at the highest level for years. I think there’s a lot of talk about their defensive structure. But they have a lot of really, really good footballers and that’s something we aren’t going to be taking lightly.”