Mickey Moran and Malachy O’Rourke: The ultimate meeting of Ulster minds

December football in Ulster. Low skies and foot-stamping in the stands. Soft ground and mucky balls. And on the sideline, under thick wool hats and behind teachers' glasses, two pillars of the game in the northern province. Malachy O'Rourke and Mickey Moran, around 60 years of coaching on the clock between them. Still pushing on.

The club championship can be a lotto spin at the best of times but we probably shouldn’t be too surprised at the numbers that have come up here. Had you sat down in August and run your finger through the names managing teams in all the clubs in all the Ulster counties, you’d have been confident enough in taking a swing at finding Moran and O’Rourke still standing when it came down to the final four. This is who they are, this is what they do.

Moran has been a coach at the highest level now for over four decades. He coached Derry for the first time when he was in his 20s and still a player. He first managed a team in the Ulster club championship all of 33 years ago, when he took Omagh St Enda’s to their first Tyrone title since the mid-1960s. He has won it with Slaughtneil, he has won it with Kilcoo. At intercounty, he has managed at every level from Division Four to the All-Ireland final.

Watching that game back, it was a coaching masterclass from Moran.

He has seen Kilcoo to this point and beyond before of course. This year marked their ninth Down title in 10 seasons and their third in a row with Moran at the helm. Kilcoo have more or less swallowed the Down championship whole in the past decade but they hadn’t made their mark on Ulster until he took them over in 2019.

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Their run that year went all the way to Croke Park, where they brought Corofin to extra-time in the All-Ireland final. This is the Corofin side, remember, that has torched Nemo Rangers and Dr Crokes in the finals of the previous two years by 15 and 12 points respectively. Yet under Moran, Kilcoo dragged the best club team of the age into a dogfight and refused to let go of them.

Coaching masterclass

Watching that game back, it was a coaching masterclass from Moran. On paper, Kilcoo ought to have been thoroughly outgunned, just like everyone else in the country had been for most of the previous three years. Yet they refused to be toyed with when the sides met in January 2020, in one of the last matches at Croke Park before the pandemic hit.

“In other finals, we were probably let play football,” said Corofin manager Kevin O’Brien at the time. “That was the way other teams set up.” Kilcoo didn’t extend them the courtesy, funnily enough. They made Corofin scrabble in the dirt for every bit of ground they got. For the first 24 minutes of that final, nobody scored from play.

In other years, Corofin were out the gap by half-time. In 2019, Kilcoo led 0-3 to 0-2 at the break and fought all the way to extra-time. In the end, Corofin’s class told and they blitzed the Down champions with 1-4 in the first half of that extra-time but it was a typically thoughtful and targeted effort from Moran’s side. They were in their first ever All-Ireland final and they very nearly pulled off a shock for the ages.

With the provincial championships having gone to the wayside last year, Kilcoo are the defending Ulster champions. Yet they go into Sunday’s Ulster semi-final against Derry champions Glen as underdogs, at least in part due to the identity of the man in the opposing Bainisteoir bib.

O’Rourke has been managing teams for around half the time Moran has but success has followed him just as insistently. He got Tyholland promoted in his first year in Monaghan, back in 2001. He won a first Derry title in 70 years for The Loup in 2003 and followed it up with their only Ulster club title. He won a Tyrone title with Errigal Ciarán, a Cavan title with Cavan Gaels. Everywhere he has gone, he has won.

And who do they find in the opposing dug-out? Only one of their own.

O’Rourke is best known nationally for his seven seasons with Monaghan, which brought two Ulster titles and a first All-Ireland semi-final since 1988. Having sat out for a year after leaving that gig in 2019, he pitched up with Maghera club Glen last year. The Watty Grahams had long been a curious outlier in the Derry championship – based in a football heartland with plenty of underage success yet without a county title since their founding in 1948.

That long and fruitless stretch ended this year. And how. Back on the first weekend of September, Watty Grahams beat Bellaghy in their championship opener by 0-13 to 0-8. In the six matches thereafter it took to win the Derry championship, no other team got within six points of them. Their average margin of victory on this run through the championship is a shade over 12 points. It’s like they’ve finally kicked down the door and found a water slide on the other side to take them the rest of the way.

Subplots

Now they’re one game away from an Ulster final. And who do they find in the opposing dug-out? Only one of their own. Yes, the subplot of all subplots tomorrow afternoon is the fact that Mickey Moran, coach to what must seem like half the footballing population of Connacht and Ulster at some stage over the past 45 years, grew up playing for none other than Glen Watty Grahams.

The Moran family is steeped in the club, indeed. Moran’s father Charlie played in goals for Derry back in the 1940s, one of the first Glen players to play intercounty. Moran himself played in every line of the pitch for Derry at one stage or another – goals included. His son Conleth played in the 2004 All-Ireland semi-final against Kerry, with Mickey as manager.

Yet Moran himself has never managed the club’s senior team. He has been involved at various levels over the years but his success has been with near-neighbours Slaughtneil. Watching Moran win Derry and Ulster titles with their parish rivals was bad enough down the years – having to face off against him now with an Ulster final close enough to taste adds a hell of a frisson to the encounter.

Moran will be unmoved, though. If history is any guide, he’ll be quietly cranky at the idea that Kilcoo are underdogs against a team playing in its first ever Ulster semi-final. Of the four teams left, Moran’s side are the only one who has ever so much as been in an Ulster decider, never mind actually won one. He and they will want to show they know the way.

It has been a quiet few years for Ulster clubs in the hunt for the All-Ireland. The Andy Merrigan Cup hasn’t journeyed north for a decade, since Crossmaglen Rangers took home their sixth title in 2012. You have to go way back to the 1970s and 80s, back at the very start of the club championships for the last time there was no Ulster holder of the All-Ireland for that long a spell.

If the thin streak ends after Christmas, we shouldn’t be shocked that it was Mickey Moran or Malachy O’Rourke who called time on it.