Mickey Moran leads Kilcoo into Saturday’s All-Ireland final meeting with Kilmacud Crokes. Michael McMullan looks at his coaching career through the perspective of those who played under him.

ORGANISED. That’s how Omagh’s Séanie Meyler remembers Mickey Moran, the man that gathered the pickings of three county minor final teams, moulding them into their 1988 O’Neill Cup winning team, ending a 25-year wait for Tyrone Championship success.

Working as a Transformation and Performance Coach with his own company, Meyler Performance, the former Tyrone star is well-placed to judge the inner workings of leaders, both in sport and in business.

After their Ulster final win over Derrygonnelly, Eugene Branagan commented on Moran’s quality over quantity approach to team talks.

“A minute at the end of training,” Branagan revealed, explaining how it really sticks and lingers ahead of the next session.

Meyler agrees, explaining the nature of football management that often brings out aggression and a gnashing of teeth.

Moran was totally different.

“He was very organised with things,” Meyler explains of his first impressions when Moran began to put Omagh through their paces. Players knew what was expected of them in a session and what exercise they’d move onto next.

Alongside club men Brendan McAleer and Garry McNamee, Moran added the league title in a county where it actually means something.

Two years later, they lost the championship final, but finished as league champions.

“You’d have more at our league games than championship games in other counties,” Meyler stresses.

“We played Coalisland in the 1990 final, we were on the same amount of points. We played them in front of a huge crowd in Pomeroy.”

Meyler remembers Mickey having his sons Antóin and Conleth travelling with him to training, where they’d be kicking balls behind the goals.

Conleth would go on to win an All-Ireland Minor title with Derry and play under him at senior level, while Antóin would’ve been part of his management team in Sleacht Néill, with similar traits of calmness.

“We got to know his wife Rita, she’d have been down too,” said Meyler of a memorable era in the Omagh club.

He last met Moran after the 2014 Ulster final, when his son Conor was on the losing side to Moran’s growing Sleacht Néill force.

“He came across as a really nice person as well as a good manager, so that was a trait and he was a genuine person,” Meyler said.

“People have traits and that’s one he would have…his genuineness and softy spoken nature. Success is about getting us over the line, that’s a big thing that Mickey has.

“People‘s records stand for themselves at the end of the day and he has been at a lot of clubs and he has won championships and Ulsters.”

Meyler also comments on his longevity. Turning 70 in April, Moran is still chasing All-Ireland glory and the long treks in the depth of winter are a testament to his desire.

After his Sleacht Néill chapter, many would’ve expected him to step aside. But he didn’t.

“To me, there is a deeper drive inside him, there has to be an intrinsic motivation to do well,” Meyler said.

Behind the calm appearance, Meyler feels Moran’s greatest strength is knowing which buttons to push.

“It’s alright having that fire in the belly, but it’s about bringing that through to players,” he said.

It ties in with Jerome Johnston’s recent comment of how Moran “drove home” the need to always take the right option. That was the difference in Kilcoo.

Mickey Moran and John Morrison’s departure from Mayo still doesn’t sit well with Conor Mortimer.

Being 10 points down after 13 minutes was never going to have the 2006 All-Ireland final ending well for a county craving Sam.

They broke even for the remainder of the game, but the horse had already bolted and it was another winter of soul-searching out West.

In the players’ lounge after the game, Mortimer pleaded with Mayo chairman James Waldron to give the duo another year. But it fell on the deaf ears. Those in positions of power were circling to appoint John O’Mahony, who Mortimer stressed was a good manager. But that wasn’t the point.

Moran and Morrison were what Mayo needed at the time. Their freshness and ‘something different’ was making progress.

“We obviously didn’t perform well in the final,” he said.

“Where we were coming from that year…we’d been in a final in ‘04, we got beat in ‘05 early, it was a quarter-final and back to the final in ‘06.

“Ultimately they were treated very, very badly by the Mayo setup at that time.

“If Mickey and John were given more time I have no doubt we’d have been successful the following year.”

In his book, One Sunday, Mortimer said Moran was ‘brilliant for my mind’. Mortimer comments how two of the words Alex Ferguson used with his players were ‘well done’ and the value of that.

Mortimer said the standout thing about Moran was his demeanour towards players and occasions.

“An occasion doesn’t overawe him in any sense,” Mortimer explains. “It could be a challenge game; it could be an All-Ireland final.”

The former Mayo star explains how players just wanted to play for him.

Speaking after their Ulster final win, Kilcoo goalkeeper Niall Kane – previously dropped by Moran – termed him a ‘legend’ and how much the Magpies are indebted to him for their success.

“You won’t see a lot of managers nowadays with nice personas towards players,” said Mortimer, who works as the general manager of the Glenroyal Leisure Club and Noa Spa in Maynooth. He also stepped into management last season with Kildare side Monasterevan.

“It is a cut throat business, which is what it boils down to for an awful lot of managers, but he (Moran) is never easy swayed,” Mortimer stresses.

“He has never really changed his demeanour insofar as he’s calm and astute pretty much all the time regardless of the situation or the team he is with.”

Mortimer finished 2006 as the championship’s top scorer and picked up an All-Star.

“Even if you are having a bad game, he’ll put a spin on it where you’d get a positive frame of mind leaving the pitch after the game, no matter how good or bad you are,” he said of Moran’s managerial skills.

“Hard luck son,” was the line when being substituted.

“He called everyone son,” Mortimer remarked.

There was never a hairdryer nor a litany of either negativity or a blame game. It was about development; the next game and the next ball.

It was a case of you didn’t have a good game today, but you’ll be back next week.

“Even to hear that you are not going to be turfed out straight away for having a bad game It works wonders for players’ confidence,” Mortimer points out. “You are back to training on a Tuesday night and you are flying about and not even thinking about what happened on the Sunday before that.”

During a Sleacht Néill homecoming, in a speech from the stage, Moran singled out a group of the reserves players, those outside the senior squad for helping drive the standards on at training. It was trivial to many, but important for Moran and the commitment they offered.

Mortimer relates to the same situation in his own management role at work. And he thinks of Moran.

“You don’t talk down to people and I think that is one thing Mickey would never have done,” he said. “Everyone is in the same boat and everybody is respected the same.”

In Mortimer’s opinion, Moran goes above and beyond in terms of communication. If a word wasn’t offered after training, a phone call was always welcomed.

He describes Moran as a personable person, something he can see in the Kilcoo players.

“All those guys go out like they enjoy the game every time they play,” Mortimer states. “They are always smiling when they’re playing and that goes down to the management.

“You can get some teams and you don’t get a smile from any of the players on the field. That generates from how you are being managed and how happy you are playing the game.”

The Mayo training sessions were positive, fine-tuning what had gone before.

“It was a nice environment to be around when Mickey and John were involved,” Mortimer added, referring to the ball-based coaching sessions.

“There was a lot of thought going into the training and into games, or how we are going to play what are you going to do and what are you going to do.”

When Sleacht Néill beat Austin Stacks to qualify for his first All-Ireland Club final, Mortimer shuffled down from his seat in the stand to congratulate Moran.

Texts have been exchanged since, they but haven’t met in person and he’s not shocked by his former manager’s success story that reaches another crossroads on Saturday.

“Everthing he gets, he deserves. A nicer fella, you won’t meet. There is not a bad word you could say about Mickey Moran,” concludes Mortimer, who accepts that he shoots from the hip on social media on a range of GAA issues. But never about his former manager.

“He is a good guy, I have always had good dealings with him, I have never had an issue and I wish him nothing but the best.“

You never forget your debut and Moran’s attention to detail in Sleacht Néill went as far as his knowledge of the underage scene.

Appointed on Christmas Eve 2013, he was even sifting through the club’s underage ranks.

Cormac O’Doherty and Paul McNeill were in their final year of minor. I was training the minors at the time and remember a phone call early in the year asking (that being the exact word) if they could join the senior panel.

He didn’t expect or insist, with the concern they’d pick up and an injury from the extra burden and miss the minor campaign.

But the purpose of underage is to feed a senior team. By the county final, O’Doherty was involved in the attack that led to Gerald Bradley’s winning goal against Ballinderry.

Within weeks, Paul McNeill was thrown in for his first outing in an Ulster Club win over Clontibret. He trusted youth. Below that, Moran knew Shane McGuigan – a year younger – was one for the future.

In his first year of minor, McGuigan was recruited as water carrier for the 2014 Derry Senior Championship. It was a job that needed done, but more importantly he’d taste of the championship, hear the noise and feel the vibe in the camp.

“I remember him and Paddy Flynn (team trainer) telling me after the Ballinderry final in the changing rooms after that this would be me next year,” McGuigan remembers. “It was a great way to be involved with the team.”

The Emmet’s were chinned by Lavey in the first round the following year, but the back door saved them. McGuigan was not on board yet as he was shooting Derry minors to a first Ulster title in 13 years.

When Sleacht Néill entered the mire of the championship qualifiers, Shane Heavron was burling points from everywhere and Moran’s men were in trouble against Magherafelt. With five second half minutes gone, Padríg Kelly was called ashore and in went McGuigan.

“There weren’t a lot of specific instructions,” he recalls. “Mickey told me he watched me at minor that year, so he said just go out and play your normal game which took the pressure completely off me.”

The game spun into a classic that needed extra-time and monster free from current manager Paul Bradley to save Sleacht Néill, who won the replay on their way to retaining the title.

Moran and Flynn were right; McGuigan was now on the other side of the white lines as a fully-fledged senior footballer, coming on for Cormac O’Doherty in the final.

Like the Kilcoo players, Conor Mortimer and Séanie Meyler, McGuigan – whose father Christopher was a selector in their 2004 success – pinpoints Moran’s composure as the missing link to their now sustained success.

“The thing I found he brought to us was first and foremost a belief in ourselves and our abilities,” points out McGuigan, who has developed into one of the best forwards in Ulster.

“And then a calmness to our play. In previous years we were maybe too erratic at times, but Mickey improved our decision making on the ball massively.”

That Sleacht Néill dressing room had three sub groups. The elders craved a second medal to back up 2004. Others, like current Derry skipper Chrissy McKaigue, had yet to win a football medal at club level. Below that, were the young bucks dining off a sprinkling of underage medals and a golden MacRory Cup generation in St Patrick’s, Maghera. Players like McGuigan.

“He could read the situation and the dynamics of the room,” he said, when asked of Moran’s style.

“If he felt we needed a stern word or something to get us motivated he could do that but also knew when to calm the team down…he was brilliant.”

On the coaching field, Moran has few peers across the land and coached Derry to their one and only All-Ireland in 1993.

Moran left his stamp on McGuigan as he swapped underage for club senior on his way to the inter-county scene.

What from the training field made the biggest impression?

“He made me play in different positions which at the time I didn’t quite like, but now looking back on it I feel it’s helped my game massively,” came McGuigan’s reply of a man thinking outside the box.

When he called Barry Gillis onto the Derry senior panel in the early noughties, it was for his club outfield skills that allowed him to be a sweeper ‘keeper.

For McGuigan, what it is that has made Moran a success wherever he has gone and is on the cusp of a first All-Ireland as manager.

“I think the thing with Mickey is that anyone who knows him knows the person as well as a manager,” McGuigan replied.

“Anyone that has trained under Mickey would do anything for the man and nothing was too big an ask for us.”

Mickey Moran has the chance to win a first All-Ireland on Saturday. If Kilcoo get across that finish line, his phone will be pinging with congratulations from those who played under him.