Kevin Moran: ‘We weren’t good enough to get over the line. We are now’

In a bygone era, Kevin Moran and David Burke would have been treated to dinner by a national newspaper last week. Their words would have been captured and printed from the captains’ table last weekend.

Burke’s quotes about Derek McGrath’s team – “I don’t think a sweeper is going to win you an All-Ireland” and Cork being a “better balanced” team than Waterford prior to the All-Ireland semi-final – might have been put to the Galway skipper.

Moran would have been asked for his reply.

As diplomatic as the exchanges might have been, it would have been worth reading or at least getting the journalist’s gauge on the atmosphere between the two.

Alas, that All-Ireland final tradition has fallen by the wayside as such access to players is largely prohibited by managers. That’s not to say that Burke’s quotes, which Moran says he was unaware of (Dan Shanahan wasn’t), couldn’t be put to the Waterford captain.

“We play in a certain way a lot of teams actually play,” Moran stressed. “Sometimes, with other teams, it’s termed a deep-lying half-forward but with us it’s different. That’s another day’s work. Look, we have to play to our strengths. I think the game is evolving constantly and you see that with all the top teams.

“When things like that are said, it’s water off a duck’s back at this stage. We have to keep going, have to do what’s right for us. If we take what people from the outside are saying, sure it would cripple any man, especially this year, so we have to stick to what we and Derek believe in, what suits us.

“There are hundreds of people, I’m sure, that are high up who have a lot to say on us and blah-de-blah and those critics are entitled to their opinion.”

At Waterford’s press morning last week, McGrath and Moran, clubmates, work colleagues, manager and captain, friend and pal, fielded questions on adjacent tables. How McGrath has withstood the criticism directed his way for the team’s style impresses Moran greatly. “I don’t want to go into the whole traditionalists and all this kind of stuff and why sometimes we are labelled but that man over there (McGrath), the amount of stuff that has been said from both in and outside the county... if he took it literally it would break any man.

“In saying that, there had been great support from the good people within the county that know how much this team have put in. That’s reassuring and it’s great to be involved in it.”

It was 11 years ago that Moran made his league and championship debuts on that swashbuckling side of Justin McCarthy’s. The great entertainers only got so far, though. The we’re-going-to-score-one-more-than-you, laissez-faire approach was flawed. A more defensively-minded style guided them to a final in 2008 even if it imploded on the day. Nine years on, they are playing in September again, breaking records for scoring tallies yet known more for the number of players they devote to guarding their goalposts.

“Nowadays in hurling it’s very easy to pick up the ball and let rip,” Moran remarked. “The game has changed. If you look back on games that might pop up on your telly from 15 years ago you would be kind of, not laughing, but it’s totally different. If you look at pictures of matches of Roy Keane and going back to as far as (Franz) Beckenbauer it’s a totally different game.

“The players now look quicker and fitter and the ball is moving quicker, there seems to be more skill, the pitches are better. All of that is a contributing factor. The team that I came into when I was 18 more than 10 years ago, they were some of the best hurlers Waterford has ever produced but, what, do we keep trying to do that and produce these types of players?

“I’m training with lads now who mightn’t even be on the starting 15 but are more skilful than 90% of the lads that were there when I first came onto the panel and that’s just the way it is. The skill level is absolutely through the roof, way ahead of where it was. The speed, the fitness, everything got to do with it. Plus the workload you’re putting in is far superior than when I first started.

“If you’re putting in all that you have to be careful about what you’re doing with the ball. You have to use the ball as efficiently as possible. Waterford have suffered heartache from seven-goal drubbings against Tipperary in a Munster final to being absolutely hammered in the 2008 All-Ireland final by a super team but that doesn’t make it any easier for ourselves. We have to try and set up as best we can to prevent teams from scoring goals because the more goals you score the more chance you have of winning it and the more goals you concede the less chance you have.”

Just twice in his 12-year senior career has Moran not had an All-Ireland semi-final to look forward to, but then that record of two wins in 10 ties doesn’t read too handsomely. “We probably just weren’t good enough to get over the line,” he recalled of 2008. “Being straight about it, I don’t know if we’ve been good enough the last six or seven years. It’s only since Derek has come in that there has been a drive and an ambition to get back there and go for it because I think we are good enough and there’s no better time than the present.”

Moran’s father Paul may be Tuam-born but there is no question of his allegiances tomorrow. There has been some banter in the family but the match is being treated like any other as much as Moran can do that.

“It’s just another game for us. Look, it’s massive and I’m not putting it on the long finger and there’s a super buzz around but we can’t let it be anything more than what we have been doing, like what we did against Offaly and Kilkenny. They mightn’t be the answers you’re looking for but that’s the reality.”

The 30-year-old and Michael Walsh has thrice enjoyed SHC wins over Galway – 2006, ’09 and ’11 – but even that experience of knowing what it is to come off a field having beaten them won’t count for much, he maintains.

“As a player I don’t think that comes into your mindset because there are times when they’ve beaten us in the league and I couldn’t even tell you the year when we last beat Galway in the championship. Those stats are there for the likes of yourselves (journalists) to throw up and I suppose some people find them relevant but an All-Ireland final on September 3 I don’t know if what happened in 2009 will have a bearing on the outcome of the game.

“The hurdle we’re encountering is the biggest of the year and they’re a phenomenal team so far this year and we just have to get ourselves right.”