Daniel Carey
TWENTY-FIVE minutes into last Saturday night’s game, the number 20 flashed up on sideline official Declan Hunt’s board. Ronan McGarrity entered the fray and the crowd erupted. Having battled with serious illness over the last couple of months, the Ballina man’s return to competitive action nearly brought the house down.
“It was brilliant,” commented Barry Moran, whose second half goal prompted the other big Mayo cheer of the night. “You saw it when he came in … the reception he got from the crowd alone was massive, and it really lifted the team. When he was diagnosed with the cancer, Ronan came in, he sat down and he said: ‘I’m going to be back for after the Galway game’. He kept his promise and our promise to him was we’d still be in championship football. We’re still there, and hopefully we can live up to the promise that we made him, because he’s back on the pitch for us, and it’s a huge bonus.”
Moran was out of action himself for seven weeks, having been stretchered off with an ankle injury in the All-Ireland U-21 semi-final defeat by Laois. He’s glad to be back in competitive action..
“I’m only back about three or four weeks, so it’s just brilliant to get back to championship football, and we’ll hopefully go from here,” he told The Mayo News after Saturday’s victory. “It’s one step at a time. This is the first step of three, hopefully. Croke Park is where we want to get to. We’ve another two games to do that.”
Most counties have spent the last few months searching for their Kieran Donaghy. The tall Moran, like the Kerryman a midfielder by training, proved a success in his first outing at full forward. How did he find the new role?
“It’s totally different, anyway!” laughed the Castlebar man. “As you know, I’m usually playing around midfield. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been trying [full forward] that at training and luckily, things went half decent today in that I wasn’t taken off after 20 minutes! Things went well for me, I suppose, but it is a completely different role from midfield.”
His modest words belie his contribution. Moran caused havoc in the Cavan full-back line. He almost fisted in an early goal, but his effort slided just right of the post before being cleared. He caught David Brady’s long ball but James Reilly’s decent save kept him out. He set up Andy Moran for a good chance in the second half, before netting himself in the 50th minute after Conor Mortimer’s initial effort was blocked. Coming in the wake of two Cavan goals, it proved a timely case of being in the right place at the right time.
“The ball broke, Conor had a goal chance, it came off the goalkeeper, and I was just lucky enough to be there, and it was just a tap-in,” he mused. “But it was lucky that it came just after the Cavan goal, because if we hadn’t got that, it probably would have been a closer game. So it allowed us a bit of leeway and we pulled away from there.”
Moran’s deployment on the edge of the square was one of many sweeping changes made by John O’Mahony from the side which lost to Galway. Many of them paid off.
“Yeah, there was Pierce [Hanley], David [Kilcullen], myself … it was a big risk for John to even try that, so luckily for us and for the management, it did work out,” he said. “But in saying that, over the last couple of weeks in training, we have been trying these things. It’s not just one thing he picked out of a hat. Thankfully it worked today and we have to just keep our heads on the ground and try to go from here next week, and the following week if we win that.”
Some Mayo full-forwards to remember
1936 Paddy Moclair Ballina
1941 Josie Munnelly Castlebar
1950 Tom Langan Ballycastle
1968 Mick Ruane Castlebar
1970 Willie McGee Burrishoole
1989 Jimmy Burke Aghamore
1996 John Casey Charlestown
2004 Trevor Mortimer Shrule/Glencorrib
2007 Barry Moran
Castlebar
