Moran’s magical impact on Mayo success a lesson for other counties

By Kevin Egan

Intercounty football has never been as good to watch and if the usual trend is followed - namely that of club, college and underage coaches mimicking the tactics that are successful on the biggest stage of all – then for the next few years, the sport at every level is in for a real boom.

It’s not all sunshine and roses for players, with tens of thousands of them sure to face into training programmes designed to turn them into rabid-tackling clones of Ryan O’Donoghue, but it wasn’t just their 75-year history of near and not-so-near misses that made Mayo’s victory so emotional for the ‘neutrals’ in 30 counties last Sunday; it was that they played with all the power and relentlessness of the Atlantic Ocean that crashes against their western shore.

Mayo didn’t come to Croke Park with an intricate game plan designed to strip the risk out their game, even though their track record in this fixture made them more entitled to take that approach than anyone else. They came with a belief in their ability to make mistakes, to take setbacks, and to win anyway.

Mayo took on a Kerry team who had their own unique and long shadows cast by the giants that came before them; the reigning All-Ireland champions, with some of the most gifted players that have ever kicked a ball. Against that, Mayo used their legacy and context as fuel to make that stellar Kerry team look like a side that was playing league football in February.

Yet while there’s no mistaking the key tactical and footballing elements that earned this All-Ireland title for Mayo, it’s a racing certainty that in two, three and four years’ time, some county will be successful with a very different approach. It’s impossible to compare eras right now because the new, post-FRC era of Gaelic football is still in its infancy, but in three years a little over a decade ago, there was Jim McGuinness’ Donegal side on top of the tree, followed by Jim Gavin’s Dublin and a Kerry side under Eamon Fitzmaurice, all deploying very different styles.

More important that the tactical approach, which was customized to suit the players at Andy Moran’s disposal, was the positive energy and charisma of the former Footballer of the Year, and his ability to bring players along with him on the journey and to believe in what he’s doing.

Since the final he has referred to a handful of players choosing to up sticks from Dublin and come back home to facilitate football, and in one instance – David McBrien – Moran asked reporters if anyone could help find him a job, because he hasn’t been working.

The era where players need to be cajoled into good behaviour, or where players came back into the county set up carrying a stone of winter weight, is long gone – which is a surprise to nobody who is in regular contact with any players who aspire to represent their county. On the way out after them is the “my way or the highway” manager, whose authority stems from a place of fear.

The buck still stops in one place and there has to be one person who has the final say on all things, but that individual has to be able to get a panel of players and a backroom team to see their vision, and to buy into it. In a county with endless playing resources, where there is always another talented and hungry individual willing to toe the line if an existing player pushes back on anything, then there might still be a place for the Brian Cody type, who expects blind obedience. In the majority of counties, however, that’s not realistic, and while not all managers need to be the charismatic, pied piper type in the Jim McGuinness mould, there needs to be an element of it on the management team.

John Kiely is not that type, but Paul Kinnerk’s track record is such that he has earned the trust of every Limerick player now, and long into the future. Jack O’Connor is a shrewd football man, but he understood the need for Kieran Donaghy to add that sprinkle of magic to his dressing room.

Andy Moran takes that charisma element to a whole new level, and players respond to his trust. It was Moran who inspired players to move back home purely for football, it was Moran who put his faith in Jack Carney to become the team’s leading two-point threat, it was Moran who played a key role in getting Kobe McDonald to throw his lot in with Mayo this year, potentially risking his future professional career in Australia.

His stellar career in the green and red colours did his cause no harm, but that element is not essential either, as long as it’s factored into the overall makeup of the management team – as evidenced by Mark McHugh’s success in Westmeath and what Gavin Devlin has achieved in Louth, with a similar approach.

As Offaly GAA continue their search for the next senior football manager, it’s that lesson, rather than anything tactical, that needs to be drawn from this year’s memorable All-Ireland championship.