WINTER only tightens the invisibility cloak around Mickey Moran.
In summer, you might see the shock of grey hair or be able to recognise the stance, but in Ulster Club football, his heavy, dark clothing and thick hat have disappeared him into the darkness of the huddle he prefers.
When he stepped down from the Leitrim job due to ill-health in 2011, it was widely expected that we’d seen the last of him along the line.
The following December, he reappeared as manager of Kilrea. When he was appointed, he took a call from the County Derry Post.
“A year ago, I wasn’t in a great place. But thanks to doctors and modern technology, I got a second chance…
“You have a choice. You can sit at home and keep worrying, or you can go out and do something you enjoy and I’m delighted to get the chance to manage Kilrea,” he said.
A decade on, that remains the last interview Mickey Moran granted.
Now, when he sits at home, it’s the health of Kilcoo’s football team that he agitates over rather than his own.
Into his 70s now, football keeps him young and fresh.
His record is remarkable. Forget about the past successes that began with an All-Ireland Vocational Schools title for St Mary’s, Limavady in 1984 and concentrate on the last decade.
Since he took over in Slaughtneil in late 2013, Moran’s teams have been involved in 54 county and provincial championship games. They’ve won 48 of them and lost just three.
Slaughtneil won four straight Derry titles and three in Ulster, losing only to Scotstown in 2015.
Kilcoo have won three consecutive Down titles and back-to-back Ulsters with only a round two loss to Warrenpoint last year damaging the CV in Down.
For five of the last six Ulster club title wins, Mickey Moran’s been the manager.
While Paul Devlin spoke earlier this week of the sense that Covid-19 robbed them of another possible run at it, there was a fair chance that a meeting with Slaughtneil would have been inevitable in 2020.
The Emmet’s were playing some fine football themselves. When Moran was in charge there, Slaughtneil were the hurdle Kilcoo couldn’t get over.
The two clubs are one and the same. When Moran first walked into Emmet Park a little over eight years ago, the football was there. The application and discipline were what they lacked.
In four years, they had just two red cards in championship football, one of which – for Paul McNeill against Kilcoo in 2017 - was rescinded.
The other went to Padraig Cassidy towards the end of the first half of that season’s All-Ireland final.
Moran would probably already have his All-Ireland club title secured if that hadn’t happened. Slaughtneil were playing all the football against Dr Croke's and Cassidy was in line for man-of-the-match.
In his three years with Kilcoo, Aidan Branagan’s injury-time dunt against St Finbarr’s earned them a first straight red card in championship football.
Dylan Ward got two yellows in the All-Ireland final, as did Jerome Johnston earlier that year against Derrygonnelly.
Moran took teams with a reputation for straying to the wrong side of the line and brought them in just enough. Nobody would ever say his Kilcoo or Slaughtneil teams were soft, but they learned what was good for them.
Whether you call it progress or a transformation, it shows how adaptable Moran has become.
In 2017, former Donegal skipper John Gildea had this to say.
“I’ve nothing but admiration for the man. But Mickey, to me, was never a disciplinarian. That was never in his nature. Unless things have changed drastically in his club management regime.
“To me, he wasn’t that guy that was going to instil that discipline in a team. But what he brought was probably the best football man I’ve ever played under, and he’s obviously still doing that.”
Yet it is discipline that has become the very central pillar of everything he’s achieved in the seven years.
For all the changing dynamic in football, he’s kept to the basic principle of his teams always needing to attack.
When he was in charge of Derry for the last time, guiding them to an All-Ireland semi-final in 2004, he would referee the in-house games. The ball had to be moved forward and anyone giving a pass has to move forward with it or else a free was blown against them.
Kilcoo won’t kick much into the Kilmacud blanket on Saturday evening, but despite their reputation as a defensive team, it’s their ability to get ahead of the ball on the counter-attack that sets them apart.
Football was very different when he took Omagh to a county title 34 years ago and set the ball properly rolling on a management career that only took that brief pause in 2011.
He has 1993 as Derry’s trainer but the longing for his own All-Ireland as manager has involved four finals – two with Slaughtneil, one with Kilcoo and 2006 with Mayo.
Getting his hands on the Andy Merrigan Cup tomorrow would cement Mickey Moran’s place in history.
