'If the passion wasn't there, it's time to go' - Billy Morgan ready for another shot at glory with UCC
SIDELINE CUT: UCC manager Billy Morgan during the HE GAA Sigerson Cup Round 3 match against Queen's University Belfast. Picture: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile
Monday morning in Trabeg. Billy Morgan is at home.
As we pass through the lobby of the Nemo Rangers clubhouse, one of the ladies on the front desk inquires if Billy knows a Murphy chap from his time in New York that she ran into over there not so long ago.
A couple of Big Apple watering holes are also mentioned. Some ring a bell, others not. It’s been nearly 40 years, after all.
The almost four years that Billy and his family spent in New York in the early 80s whilst he furthered his physical education qualifications is one of the many chapters to his 78-year existence.
The chapter this conversation begins with is Billy Morgan the UCC student. The year is 1963.
Although his goalkeeping journey had taken its first tentative steps a year or two earlier, Morgan was at half-forward on the Cork minor team beaten by Kerry in the ‘63 Munster final.
Life as a third-level student threw in shortly after. But he didn’t play at half-forward or in goals for UCC that winter. He didn’t play any football at all.
“I had a slight altercation with somebody in Nemo, got a stupid grudge, and went away playing soccer with Tramore Athletic,” Billy recalls, all of 60 years later.
Sigerson Cup, 1964. UCC are without a goalkeeper, Morgan without a grudge.
His friend, Paddy Brett, was in the same medicine class as All-Ireland winning Kerry forward Dave Geaney. Paddy mentioned to Dave that he knew a goalkeeper, the approach by Dave to Billy following quickly after.
Morgan can still see the spine of the UCC team stretching out in front of him. Jerry Lucey at full-back, Mick Morris at six, Mick Fleming and Pat Moynihan lording the middle, the late Éamonn Ryan at centre-forward, and Geaney the tip of their spear.
Plenty more has endured.
The legendary Seán O’Neill was at full-forward for Queens on the afternoon of Morgan’s Sigerson debut in ‘64.
“He had always played wing-forward. That was one of his first times at full-forward. Queens got three goals that day. He got one and made the other two. I got a close up of how simply awesome he was.”
The defeat extended to 13 years UCC’s wait for third-level glory. An army man by the name of Denis Leahy, who subsequently trained Cork, was enlisted to improve the collective fitness and return the college to the winners’ enclosure.
Circuit training, an alien concept in those times, was done at the old men’s club in UCC.
“None of us had ever heard of it before. Denis was way ahead of his time. He got us super fit, and the rest is history.”
Back then, the Sigerson Cup comprised only four teams. You had Queens, UCD, UCG, and UCC. The competition started and finished on the one weekend.
The four universities took turns in hosting, the home team given the unusual privilege of being allowed to select their semi-final opponents.
In 1965, UCD picked UCC. Or as Geaney put it, “they picked the plugs”. They picked the wrong crowd anyway as UCC stormed the weekend. And repeated the trick 12 months later.
Life beyond the skull and crossbones called. Many more successful chapters yet to be written.
A short bridge to get the conversation to where it is going next: Morgan was captain and coach of the first Nemo team to win a Cork football title in 1972 and was manager when the club claimed its seventh and most recent All-Ireland crown in 2003.
Four years later, he brought the curtain down on an inter-county career that delivered three All-Irelands - the first as captain, the latter two as manager - and so much more along with it.
When he stepped away as Cork boss at the end of 2007, he was, as he says himself, "out the gap". His sideline days, and they numbered many, were behind him.
Cork City wanted him as manager in 2008 after Alan Mathews departed. He declined.
UCC wanted him as Sigerson manager in 2009. On this occasion, he gave a hesitant yes.
“John Grainger approached me. At the time, I was reluctant. I thought I was done with the sideline. Christy Kearney, who was involved with UCC at the time and a member here in Nemo, was onto me, as well. Grainger is a persuasive figure. I picked it up in the end.
“Now I didn't think I'd be here this long, I thought I'd only do it for a year or two.”
Three Sigerson successes and 14 years further down the road, his will be the last word before UCC take to the field for this evening’s decider against UL.
He bemoans how the competition is being continually squeezed, how the inter-county behemoth is constantly encroaching on its reduced turf. His belief is that those in power want rid of it.
Trying to strike a balance between a player’s inter-county and college commitments is a challenge that never goes away, no matter how long in the job you are.
And yet for all of that, the enjoyment he gleans from being down in the Mardyke on a dog of a Wednesday night in early January, or being cut in two above in Dangan as the wind whips in off Lough Corrib, or surviving at an ungodly hour a penalty shootout they should never have been dragged into in the first place, is as rich and fulfilling as it was 57 and 58 years ago.
Not alone that, but the capacity of the Sigerson Cup to bond people from across county bounds appeals as much to him now as it did when Dave Geaney first asked him to keep goals six decades ago.
“You make friends for life, that is the one thing I stress with the lads when they come in.
“I am still friends with players I played with in the 60s. Dave Geaney, for instance, we'd be on the phone to each other every year before Sigerson.”
Neither has the competition lost its ability to produce a rabbit from the hat.
“We have a trial every year because you never know who might come through. In 2011, we had trials and this small fella came up. We were looking at him and we said, he hasn't much sense. But he was lightning. It was Stephen O'Brien from Kerry. I had never heard of him before that trial.
“There is always somebody who breaks through who has no history of inter-county at any level. That is the beauty of the competition.” O’Brien’s introduction off the bench in the second half of the 2011 decider revived the UCC attack. The centenary final win was the college’s first in 16 years.
Another Kerryman, Paudie Clifford, was not exactly a bolter during their all-conquering 2019 campaign, but neither could Billy make sense of how slow the Kingdom were to tap into his potential.
“They seemed reluctant to pick him, even though he was going well. I couldn't understand Kerry doing that. He was super for us in 2019.” Morgan stands out as a man who has played, coached, and managed through several different evolutions of the game. One constant has been his ability to keep on winning. Well, that and being tormented by the prospect of defeat.
The need to adapt and keep pace has never been lost on him.
“I don't think Gaelic football is a particularly attractive game now. But it is pointless me trying to impose a catch and kick game again because it wouldn't work. You have to go with what works.
“Now, my mentality is the same as it ever was; to try and set them up to win. When I started off managing/coaching with Nemo back in 1971/72, I had an idea of how the game should be played. It was based on a high work-rate from everyone; corner-backs and half-backs to support what's in front of them and forwards chasing back. That hasn't changed.”
And his passion, does the fire still burn as bright as ever?
“I suppose that's for other people to say,” comes the reply.
A brief pause.
“But I suppose, yeah, I would be [as passionate as ever]. If the passion wasn't there, it is time to go.” Time to go here anyway. It’s Sigerson final week and there’s a few last bits to be done.
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