As a coach, Andy Moran served his apprenticeship away from Mayo, but there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that managing his home county was the job that he always wanted. He never hid that, and now he has it.
He is one of Mayo’s most beloved footballers, easily inside the top five and probably even higher than that. But he is also a coach with a proper track record. His work with Leitrim was bold, successful, and was also an indication of the sort of character he is. He brought eyeballs to Leitrim, he brought enthusiasm, and he brought a sense of momentum.
Eyeballs are never a problem with Mayo. But enthusiasm and momentum are two things that, for a variety of reasons, have been lacking from the Mayo public over the course of the last few years.
The Leitrim county final in 2021 was live on television for the first time ever, and that coincided, perhaps not accidentally, with Moran’s ascension to the role of county manager a few weeks before. When he moved on from Leitrim, he went to Monaghan. To me, that’s a perfect developmental curve for a manager. Three years as the main man, followed by a stint with a top-eight team as a coach.
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Some Mayo fans wonder that this may be too soon but James Horan was 38 when he took the Mayo job, having won a club title with Ballintubber. Moran is 42 in November, with four years experience of intercounty dressingrooms. Experience is not a factor.
Of more concern to those who advocated for him over the past month or so was the timing from his point of view. A different type of character may have waited for a more opportune moment to take this job. Mayo’s championship journeys, after all, have been getting progressively shorter over the course of the last few years.
But that might not be how Moran looks at it. He would see two defeats that could, and possibly should, have been wins against Galway in the last two years, and a last-minute defeat to Donegal in the qualifiers this year. If Mayo weren’t quite All-Ireland contenders this year, they were certainly capable of competing with All-Ireland contenders – Galway and Donegal are the last two beaten All-Ireland finalists.
The Mayo county board have been under fire for years, typified by how badly they managed to botch a simple task like thanking their former manager for his service, so their desperation to get the job done quickly and successfully was palpable. Moran is a very easy sell to the Mayo public.
He and his new selector Colm Boyle were part of the best Mayo team in more than half a century, but they also reflect key parts of what made that team as doughty and competitive as they were.
Moran was relentlessly positive, even as that team became a byword for heartbreaking failure. Boyle spent his entire career on a one-man mission to disavow people of the idea that Mayo only produced nice footballers. Mayo need both of those attributes in spades now.
There are footballers in Mayo, as there will always be – and Moran will know better than most, given he came on in the Division 2 league final that Ballaghaderreen won three weeks ago, and inevitably kicked two late scores in a one-point win. But there are also intangibles with Moran, the same intangibles you find with any former great going in as manager of their home county.
The record can be sketchy. Nicky English wasn’t long retired when he took over Tipperary, and brought them to an All-Ireland in 2001. Jimmy Barry-Murphy was a little longer out of the scene, and brought Cork back to the top in 1999. Other GAA greats might fit more comfortably in the Diego Maradona school of management.
Kieran McGeeney is an All-Ireland winning coach, but it didn’t come easy, and his experience might be instructive. He commanded instant respect. He asked for time and was given it (notwithstanding some dissenting voices from inside the county). And his players loved him.
It is noteworthy that even at the end of the last decade, and through the early part of this decade, no one left the Armagh squad. That has a lot to do with McGeeney the manager, but it must also have something to do with the legacy of McGeeney the player. They stuck together, through thick and thin, and got their reward.
Jim McGuinness, Pádraic Joyce, Dermot McCabe going back to Cavan – they are all on the shortest of shortlists of their county’s best players in living memory. It can’t be the only thing going for you, but it buys you time, and instant respect in the dressingroom. The single most defining, driving force of Jack O’Connor’s success with Kerry might be the absence of that elite county playing career. For better or worse, what you did as a player is a factor.
We can often be guilty of ascribing the characteristics of the player to the manager. If Joyce’s talents as an on-field leader revolved around a take-no-prisoners will to win, he has had to adjust to work with a different generation of player. That has led to four Connacht titles in a row. The first item on Moran’s to-do list will be to break that hegemony. However he approaches it, he won’t shy away from the challenge.
