BY ANDY MORAN’S reckoning, he’d been trying for the guts of a quarter of a century to win the All-Ireland with Mayo.
“Always dreamt of being part of it,” he nodded before adding with a big smile, “and now I’m kind of afraid of it!”
It’s going to be one hell of a ride over the next few weeks in Mayo, that’s for sure.
“I’d be encouraging the young fellas to go easy and just enjoy this,” counselled Moran.
For himself, the Mayo manager reckons it could be Wednesday or Thursday before it actually all sinks in, what he and Mayo have achieved together.
When the hooter sounded for full-time on Sunday, he even surprised himself with his initial feeling.
“I just found it really, really strange, I just wanted to go back into the dressing room and just chill for five minutes,” said the former Footballer of the Year.
When even someone who thinks as clearly as Moran is struggling to process an occasion, you know something seismic has occurred.
All season long he’d been crystal clear about what Mayo were trying to do, and where they were trying to get to.
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He told a tale, for example, about the Chicago Cubs baseball hat that he wore in the warm-up before the final, and how it inspired him to aim for the very top.
Andy Moran celebrates with fans after the match. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
“That wasn’t for style,” he said of the cap. “We went to Chicago, New York, London, back in October, November, to try to get our diaspora back involved. One of the most generous men I’ve ever seen insisted on buying me a Chicago Cubs hat.
“So I wear that just to remind myself of the Mayo people, successful Mayo people who went around the world and made millions of Euros, hired heaps of people, hired all the Irish boys when they were going over. If they can do it, why can’t we do it on the football field?”
Still, there were moments when even Moran’s faith in Mayo, and in the project, could have wavered. And long before they fell seven points down after a nightmare first quarter on All-Ireland final day.
Go back to the Roscommon game in the Connacht championship, for example, and the shellacking they took that day in Castlebar. Beaten by 10 points, 2-25 coughed up.
“I could never really talk freely about it but Kevin (McStay) and Stephen (Rochford) had a way of playing, and absolutely not the wrong way of playing, it’s the way most teams play,” said Moran, who succeeded McStay as Mayo manager last August.
“And we were trying to change it. And when you try to change something, and you feel on the pitch it’s not working, and you get caught between two stools, Roscommon happens. And when they have good forwards like Roscommon, that’s what happens.
“After that we just made a commitment. We said, ‘We’re just going after this’. And it didn’t really work for the first 20 minutes against Meath but then, boom, it started and from then on it’s been really good.”
Yet they were still close on 3/1 underdogs for the final.
“I know the general narrative was that we had no chance but we were kind of looking at it and we were saying, ‘Hold on here now for a second, Louth beat Armagh, Louth beat Dublin, but we beat Louth, and we get no credit for beating Louth?’” said Moran.
Andy Moran with his family and the Sam Maguire. Tom Maher / INPHO
Tom Maher / INPHO / INPHO
“We thought this the whole way through. The Monaghan game, we’re like, ‘We win and we still get no credit’. Do you know what I’m saying? There was no credit given at any time. We were like, ‘Okay, everyone is writing us off here’. It wasn’t backs-to-the-wall stuff, but we had 100 training sessions done up to this point and we were quite confident that we could give it a good rattle.”
As a life experience, Moran said it was perhaps his greatest moment, helping Mayo to end their 75-year wait for honours.
“Jesus, I don’t want to get too emotional, but there’s not much that’s going to top this,” he nodded.
His belief is that some old friends played a helping role on the day.
“I won’t lie to you, 69 minutes, I look up to the skies, and you’re on about psychology and tactics and geniuses and all this sort of stuff – there’s two people, John O’Mahony and a cousin of my wife Jenny’s, a good friend of ours, Aidan Drake, who passed away last year, and I said, ‘Lads, if you’re going to do it for us, now is the time, let’s go!’” said Moran.
“And they answered our prayers and we got the ball out and I think Jack Carney pinged one up to David McBrien and away we went.”
Moran thought of his former playing colleagues too, who were beaten so often in tight All-Ireland deciders. And men like Donie Vaughan and Liam McHale, both sent off in final losses with Mayo.
“Guys that have suffered, not only losing but real heartache in All-Ireland finals, and blamed for a lot of it,” he said. “I just hope that this gives a bit of peace to those guys.”
In terms of the game itself, Moran reckoned that Donnacha McHugh, who was marking David Clifford, struggled for the first 15 minutes ‘and then has the most outstanding game, from my point of view, for the next 55′. It was a summary you could have attached to the team’s overall performance.
“I think there were two massive moments,” said Moran of when things turned for Mayo in the second quarter. “David McBrien comes up, and you talk about leadership, he gets his first point in Championship history.
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“And then Jack Carney does what he’s done all year and kicks a two. And then Ryan kicks a two and now we’re at five. All of a sudden we were only three or four points down and the game has turned. Ryan starts pressuring, our press starts working.”
Mayo knocked over four two-pointers in all, compared to just one for Kerry. Converted back into old money, the game would have ended in a draw at 1-16 apiece.
“Last year, I remember having a great conversation with Stevie O’Hanlon in Monaghan,” said Moran, the former Farney coach. “Stevie was a top class basketballer and I said, ‘Is the two more valuable in Gaelic than it is in basketball?’ And he said, ‘Absolutely’. He said, ‘You go from three to two in basketball, whereas you go from one to two in Gaelic football’. So the two-pointer was huge and we knew we had the shooters to hit them and they hit them.”
Where Mayo go from here is anyone’s guess. And those guesses will range from pundits suggesting they can win more All-Irelands to others who will feel that it will take them a season or two just to process the enormity of this achievement.
“We’ve great young boys,” insisted Moran, looking to a promising future. “Séamie Howard from Belmullet, John MacMonagle from Castlebar, Hugh O’Loughlin from Kilmaine, we’ve great young boys still coming.
“Obviously Kobe is going to be a loss but listen, I think we’ve got a huge potential for development now going forward in the next three to five years and I hope the boys can, when they settle, and we get them back in about October, but I hope they can see that.”
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'Jesus, I don't want to get too emotional, but there's not much that's going to top this'
BY ANDY MORAN’S reckoning, he’d been trying for the guts of a quarter of a century to win the All-Ireland with Mayo.
“Always dreamt of being part of it,” he nodded before adding with a big smile, “and now I’m kind of afraid of it!”
It’s going to be one hell of a ride over the next few weeks in Mayo, that’s for sure.
“I’d be encouraging the young fellas to go easy and just enjoy this,” counselled Moran.
For himself, the Mayo manager reckons it could be Wednesday or Thursday before it actually all sinks in, what he and Mayo have achieved together.
When the hooter sounded for full-time on Sunday, he even surprised himself with his initial feeling.
“I just found it really, really strange, I just wanted to go back into the dressing room and just chill for five minutes,” said the former Footballer of the Year.
When even someone who thinks as clearly as Moran is struggling to process an occasion, you know something seismic has occurred.
All season long he’d been crystal clear about what Mayo were trying to do, and where they were trying to get to.
He told a tale, for example, about the Chicago Cubs baseball hat that he wore in the warm-up before the final, and how it inspired him to aim for the very top.
“That wasn’t for style,” he said of the cap. “We went to Chicago, New York, London, back in October, November, to try to get our diaspora back involved. One of the most generous men I’ve ever seen insisted on buying me a Chicago Cubs hat.
“So I wear that just to remind myself of the Mayo people, successful Mayo people who went around the world and made millions of Euros, hired heaps of people, hired all the Irish boys when they were going over. If they can do it, why can’t we do it on the football field?”
Still, there were moments when even Moran’s faith in Mayo, and in the project, could have wavered. And long before they fell seven points down after a nightmare first quarter on All-Ireland final day.
Go back to the Roscommon game in the Connacht championship, for example, and the shellacking they took that day in Castlebar. Beaten by 10 points, 2-25 coughed up.
“I could never really talk freely about it but Kevin (McStay) and Stephen (Rochford) had a way of playing, and absolutely not the wrong way of playing, it’s the way most teams play,” said Moran, who succeeded McStay as Mayo manager last August.
“And we were trying to change it. And when you try to change something, and you feel on the pitch it’s not working, and you get caught between two stools, Roscommon happens. And when they have good forwards like Roscommon, that’s what happens.
“After that we just made a commitment. We said, ‘We’re just going after this’. And it didn’t really work for the first 20 minutes against Meath but then, boom, it started and from then on it’s been really good.”
Yet they were still close on 3/1 underdogs for the final.
“I know the general narrative was that we had no chance but we were kind of looking at it and we were saying, ‘Hold on here now for a second, Louth beat Armagh, Louth beat Dublin, but we beat Louth, and we get no credit for beating Louth?’” said Moran.
“We thought this the whole way through. The Monaghan game, we’re like, ‘We win and we still get no credit’. Do you know what I’m saying? There was no credit given at any time. We were like, ‘Okay, everyone is writing us off here’. It wasn’t backs-to-the-wall stuff, but we had 100 training sessions done up to this point and we were quite confident that we could give it a good rattle.”
As a life experience, Moran said it was perhaps his greatest moment, helping Mayo to end their 75-year wait for honours.
“Jesus, I don’t want to get too emotional, but there’s not much that’s going to top this,” he nodded.
His belief is that some old friends played a helping role on the day.
“I won’t lie to you, 69 minutes, I look up to the skies, and you’re on about psychology and tactics and geniuses and all this sort of stuff – there’s two people, John O’Mahony and a cousin of my wife Jenny’s, a good friend of ours, Aidan Drake, who passed away last year, and I said, ‘Lads, if you’re going to do it for us, now is the time, let’s go!’” said Moran.
“And they answered our prayers and we got the ball out and I think Jack Carney pinged one up to David McBrien and away we went.”
Moran thought of his former playing colleagues too, who were beaten so often in tight All-Ireland deciders. And men like Donie Vaughan and Liam McHale, both sent off in final losses with Mayo.
“Guys that have suffered, not only losing but real heartache in All-Ireland finals, and blamed for a lot of it,” he said. “I just hope that this gives a bit of peace to those guys.”
In terms of the game itself, Moran reckoned that Donnacha McHugh, who was marking David Clifford, struggled for the first 15 minutes ‘and then has the most outstanding game, from my point of view, for the next 55′. It was a summary you could have attached to the team’s overall performance.
“I think there were two massive moments,” said Moran of when things turned for Mayo in the second quarter. “David McBrien comes up, and you talk about leadership, he gets his first point in Championship history.
“And then Jack Carney does what he’s done all year and kicks a two. And then Ryan kicks a two and now we’re at five. All of a sudden we were only three or four points down and the game has turned. Ryan starts pressuring, our press starts working.”
Mayo knocked over four two-pointers in all, compared to just one for Kerry. Converted back into old money, the game would have ended in a draw at 1-16 apiece.
“Last year, I remember having a great conversation with Stevie O’Hanlon in Monaghan,” said Moran, the former Farney coach. “Stevie was a top class basketballer and I said, ‘Is the two more valuable in Gaelic than it is in basketball?’ And he said, ‘Absolutely’. He said, ‘You go from three to two in basketball, whereas you go from one to two in Gaelic football’. So the two-pointer was huge and we knew we had the shooters to hit them and they hit them.”
Where Mayo go from here is anyone’s guess. And those guesses will range from pundits suggesting they can win more All-Irelands to others who will feel that it will take them a season or two just to process the enormity of this achievement.
“We’ve great young boys,” insisted Moran, looking to a promising future. “Séamie Howard from Belmullet, John MacMonagle from Castlebar, Hugh O’Loughlin from Kilmaine, we’ve great young boys still coming.
“Obviously Kobe is going to be a loss but listen, I think we’ve got a huge potential for development now going forward in the next three to five years and I hope the boys can, when they settle, and we get them back in about October, but I hope they can see that.”
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