Andy Moran finding heaven after New York hell 

The doubters feared Andy Moran had brought nothing to Leitrim. Now he has brought them to Croke Park, but the Leitrim journey is just getting started. 

Leitrim manager Andy Moran speaks to his players after the game Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Evan Logan

He’s a made man in the county now for getting them to Croke Park but last year both Leitrim and Andy Moran could easily have opted to cut their losses and links and just accept that as a manager he was going to be more Bobby Charlton than Bobby Robson.

The mood was darkest in the wee hours of a Sunday morning last April. It would have been well past midnight in various bars at home, from Gay Prior’s in Ballinamore to Dunne’s in Carrick, when a certain Connacht championship game was settled on penalties, sending the New York GAA community into rapture and Leitrim into gloom. After 22 attempts New York had finally beaten someone and Leitrim had to endure the ignominy that it was them.

As the night went on, conversation in some of those watering holes would have escalated to mutinous. What exactly had Andy Moran been brought in for and why was the county funding a backroom team that was supposed to be high performance but performance levels hadn’t obviously raised?

A fortnight earlier the county had again missed out on promotion, having also failed the previous summer to reach Croke Park after losing to Sligo in a Tailteann Cup quarter-final on penalties. Now they’d been beaten on penalties again.

This time having missed every one of theirs! Call Terry Hyland old school but at least he got Leitrim to Division 3. Going strictly by results, the county had been better before Moran and would be better off without him.

Those doubters and dissenters will be glad to learn that in those hours and days no one was hurting more than Andy Moran himself. “I’m a positive guy by nature,” he’ll say at this remove, “but I’d be lying if I was to say I was in a good place back then.”

Straight after the game he put on a brave face. Congratulated New York on a landmark win. Spoke to the press that had travelled so far. Dutifully attended a function held at and by the team’s main sponsors, JP Clarke’s in Yonkers. He and the team owed it to Seamus and Catriona Clarke, and the thousands of Leitrim supporters who had travelled.

But after that he went into mourning, hiding, a daze. How disoriented was he? For all of his life he had either wanted to play for Mayo or actually played for them, had lived on the Roscommon border, or, some would insist, in a Roscommon town. Yet the day after the night before he was completely oblivious that those two counties were also playing in the Connacht championship.

“I didn’t even get up to watch it. For the first time in my life Mayo being beaten by Roscommon was the least of my worries.” 

Before leaving for JFK the team had a brief meeting at their hotel. “Everyone was hurting but everyone was committed to just sticking at it. And our first training back home on the Friday everyone to a man was there. That was hugely reassuring and I thought we went on to give a good account of ourselves in the Tailteann Cup.” 

Again our friends in those late bars would have cause to be sceptical of Moran and his upbeat disposition. “A good account of ourselves in the Tailteann Cup”? In 2022 you could argue that Leitrim did, blowing away Antrim who had operated in a higher division that season, followed by that cracking game and agonising loss to Sligo. But in 2023? They lost all three games, two by nine points.  

But Moran could see signs of good process, whatever about tangible progress; key players that had been missing in 2023 would be back for 2024, and other players had got serious championship game-time under their belt.

Crucially the players and county board could see the project hadn’t been derailed; it might have slowed down but was still heading in the right direction. Ask him did he think of stepping aside and he points to the support of those two constituencies.

“The most important people in a setup are the players. You need them to want you back. And the lads did, which was great. And we also had a brilliant county board that fully believed in what we were trying to do and could see that the players were buying into it.

“I’m a firm believer that Rome was never built in a day, or even a year. In Mayo, for all the progress we made under James [Horan] in his first year [2011], it didn’t happen overnight; I could see a lot of lads made their debut under Johnno in 2009 and 2010 and that James built upon that. And even with James it took until 2012 for us to properly compete for All-Irelands.

“So it takes two or three years to do anything in football. In the lower counties it probably takes closer to six. I’m convinced that if Leitrim keep building on the structures they now have at minor and at U20, not just at senior, in five years’ time you’ll see a really competitive team.

“The players and the board could see that we had the right structures put in place. In year one we won four out of seven league games. Same in year two. The difference this year was that we won a fifth league game to get our 10 points and gain promotion. What’s the difference in getting that extra win? Compound interest. Building on year by year, brick by brick.

“For instance, our injury profile is lower this year. The likes of Donal Casey and Ryan O’Rourke who were missing most or all of last year have been able to play seven consecutive league games over nine weeks. That comes from having a base of good strength and conditioning behind them.” 

And a greater understanding. Such is Moran’s regard for former adversaries and theirs for him, last July he felt comfortable ringing Michael Murphy to invite him to talk to the Leitrim lads and Murphy was happy to oblige.

“A pure gentleman. Just the way he led and captivated the room. He laid it out: if you want to get out of Division 4, this what you need to do. Lads might have heard something similar from other people through the years but when it was Michael Murphy telling them and the way he told it, pennies really finally dropped with some lads.” 

For Moran there was no off-season; the players might have been back with their clubs but already Moran was getting them to link up with the team’s S&C and medical support, and finding ways and people to further improve the setup.

Which is why he called another figure from Ulster. Mickey Graham. Saw that he was finished with Cavan but doing a bit with Ballinamore. So he knew quite a bit about Leitrim football, football in general, winning football in particular.

They first met up for a coffee in Virginia. “Just to shoot the breeze, pick his brains, see how our football philosophies were similar or differed.”

Moran in his first season had put a huge emphasis on moving the ball by foot and playing on the front foot; having watched tape of Leitrim in 2021 he felt the team needed to play at a higher tempo and the players and supporters needed a brand of football that would differentiate and excite them.

In 2022 it largely worked. In his second game Leitrim ran up 2-16 in Thurles on a Tipp team that won promotion. In two games in the Tailteann Cup they racked up 2-14 and 2-16. Full forward Keith Beirne led that competition and the national league in scoring.

Moran’s meeting with Graham, though, made him revisit that style.

“Teams had probably worked us out in 2023, to be honest. So we probably needed a balance between that attacking style of football and knowing how and when to slow a game down.

“Mickey could see that. Mickey has brought that. It’s been a huge coup for us. That’s the other difference between eight points in the league and ten points; having on board a fella who knows what you should do when you concede a late goal against Carlow and has the knowledge from having made so many decisions to win county and club provincial championships.

"So whatever those couple of coffees in Virginia cost they were worth it.” 

Graham was one of numerous additions to his management team; the only constants through his three seasons have been selector Barry McWeeney and Moran himself.

At the end of last season Mike Solan, Moran’s right-hand man and close friend, stepped away having taken on being the principal of a new school; Graham filled that big hole. Daithí McCabe, who had worked with several All-Ireland-winning Dublin teams, had installed a proper athletic development culture within Leitrim but decided to move on.

Again Moran knew the very man to succeed him; Darragh Finn worked under his brother Conor as part of the Mayo athletic development team before gaining lead S&C experience working with Offaly in the months either side of Liam Kearns’ shocking passing.

Finn and Moran himself now work with the county U20s as well as the seniors and already the benefits of such dovetailing are evident. “The 20s are still probably a bit behind other counties physically,” says Moran, “but they’ve made real gains over the last eight months.” 

Significant players also opted out at the end of last season. Paddy Maguire, the longest-serving player. Shane Moran. Domhnaill Flynn. Declan Maxwell. David Bruen, team captain in 2022, stayed another year in Australia. Jack Heslin has also gone travelling. And Beirne felt he couldn’t commit for 2024 either. Moran refused to despair.

“Look, all those lads have given tremendous service to Leitrim over the years, and to me in recent years. But in a county like Leitrim you give county football a go for a certain period, and then you move on or take a break for a year or two and that’s the nature of it.

“One bit of advice I got from Colm Collins is that you can’t close the door on anyone in a county like ours with a smaller playing pool. It’s only a revolving door if you like. Young men in their 20s, some of them at some stage are going to want to travel, they’re going to have other things that for a year or two might take priority or be preoccupying them. But they should always feel they can walk back in that door. I’d hope in 2025 we’ll have Keith and some of those other lads back.

“But to me the bigger story here is the players we’ve gained, not lost. Jack Gilheany is back after playing a few years of AIL with Old Belvedere. A huge addition. The same with Niall Walsh from Moycullen [a former Cavan U21 player who qualifies under the parentage rule]. Barry McNulty. Eighteen-year-old Jack Foley. Tremendous bit of stuff.” 

You can tell by how effusive he is that Moran retains his natural enthusiasm but he’s learned better how to channel it. In his first year he was so hands-on he’d be throwing or hand-passing the ball to players in the warm-up, a la Jim McGuinness or Rory Gallagher. Now, while he still does some coaching, he’s more detached, leaving such tasks to Luke Bree.

“I feel I brought the group great energy but there were times in year two in particular that I over-coached the lads. This year we’ve given them greater autonomy. That’s something I’ve learned. Am I the finished article as a manager just because we won promotion? I am not! I’m still making mistakes all the time! But I’d like to think I’m learning from them and learning in general all the time.” 

He’s loving the gig. Doesn’t know how you could do it if you weren’t self-employed as he is and has someone like his wife Jennifer and colleague Elaine Flannery to help run The Movement Gym he owns. The only downtime he gets these days are hanging out with his kids.

But he just loves it. Working with the players. Collaborating with the board and his support team. And the camaraderie he finds among fellow managers, in the lower divisions at least. One of the first and nicest texts he got after the win over Tipperary last Sunday was from John Hegarty whose Wexford team he’d pipped in the promotion chase. “Class act. Class team too, by the way.” 

To Moran they’re all in the same boat. Trying to keep it afloat. He knows Hegarty and Wexford will feel somewhat aggrieved they only lost out on promotion because of a dubious penalty Leitrim were awarded when the sides met last month, but he also senses Hegarty appreciates that Leitrim and Moran have had their own tough breaks and heartbreaks. Summer before last they seemed set for Croke Park when Shane Moran scored an extra-time goal against Sligo only for the umpire to incorrectly deem it was a square ball. Who could begrudge or deny them going there now?

During the week it was pointed out to Moran that only five times in their history have Leitrim played in Croke Park. Moran played there five times in a couple of months on his way to being the 2017 Footballer of the Year. So don’t tell Leitrim league finals should be scrapped. You won’t hear him complaining there’s only a week to the opening championship game against Sligo.

“This time last year I was scrambling to find us a pitch to train on ahead of our game in New York coming off the heartbreak of missing out on promotion and losing to Sligo by a point. And then we lost in New York. Those were problems. Playing in championship a week after playing in Croke Park is not a problem.

“For Leitrim a week and schedule like this is heaven.”