Moran stresses importance for Leitrim of Wexford win despite not playing well

Winning is often a cure for all life’s ills but Andy Moran was among the first to admit that Leitrim had not played well despite their dramatic 3-7 to 2-9 victory over Wexford in Avant Money Pairc Sean Mac Diarmada on Sunday.

“We went and fought for those two points today, I don’t think we played well if I’m being honest but we won the game,” revealed the Leitrim manager, “We’ve lost a lot of games, including New York last year, that we should have won - today we won a game at the end that we were probably expecting a different conversation about.”

Admitting that himself and Mickey Graham were not happy at halftime, Andy stressed the importance of winning in the overall battle for promotion: “Mickey Graham was going nuts behind me in the first half, it is not consistent enough. We said at halftime that we’re doing our stuff at times but not all the time.

“We’re just trying to get the lads to do it not five out of ten times but eight out of ten and then ten out of ten. That’s what really drives us on the coaching field, to get that going. Sometimes we’re doing it but we need to get into the position where it is not a choice. You see young Foley, when he goes onto Paraic Hughes, it is every time, not some times - he is chasing him,  tackling,  kicking great points, Jack is a great kid but he is doing it all the time and there is no bad habits. 

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“From a coaching point of view, Mickey said at halftime to the boys that we just need to do it over and over and over but we’re obviously just in that transition and we just need to get better at it. Basically, from the start of today, if you had lost today, you had 14 days to save your whole League campaign so today was a huge, huge game. Laois are probably going to get to ten points without much thought - everyone else is fighting for those two points.”

Leitrim  emerged with the win but Moran stresses Leitrim must keep their feet on the ground: “We won’t get too excited. You go down to Waterford and if you take that for granted, you get beaten. You go to London, you take that for granted, you get beaten. The gap between number eight in the division and number one  isn’t massive and  the key thing in this division is any team on any day can beat anyone.

“ I will go back to the Tailteann Cup game last year, the amount of players we were down last year. You look at our team today - you had Donal Casey playing, you had Cathal McHugh in the other corner,  Adam Reynolds coming on, Jamie McGrail, we had Barry McNulty, Jack Gilheaney so yes we have similar personnel but I would say we have a much stronger set of personnel this year than we did at any time last year.”

Moran’s belief in the ability of this team is undimmed: “It is not that we’re expecting or looking for stuff, it is our expectations of the lads - we think this is a really good group. Obviously there are players out there we’d love to have, we don’t have them but we think this group is a really good group. You saw the subs that came on - James Rooney, Mark Plunkett, Adam Reynolds, Paul Keaney, Tom Prior, championship minutes in them and they probably won us the game.

“They kept us in the game, they moved the ball up the field, they did really good stuff but that is the expectation we have in the group. We think we can go to a place and we just need the boys to believe it. To be fair, and we have to be fair, they never stopped - to get a bit of luck, you need to keep creating.

Leitrim manager Andy Moran chats with Darren Mulvey after Sunday's game Picture: Willie Donnellan

“Something I saw with Alex Ferguson during the week. He used to stick four up top and he said everybody remembers the time it worked, it didn’t work as many times. It worked for us today -  we got lucky, got the penalty, Ryan took it, scored it and we move on with six points.”

O’Rourke’s three goal haul is something we haven’t seen in quite a while but Moran believes he could have had one more, indeed he believes his team should have three or four more goals! “Ryanhad four goal chances -  he put the one across to Riordan where we were caught for a square ball. Darragh Rooney had one right at the start of the second half. Going back to New York, we need to take those chances - we didn’t today and we left ourselves with a mountain to climb and as we said, we got a little lucky.

“Ryan is a super footballer,  great fella, great personality around the place but we know his talent. He scored his first goal for Leitrim since 2022 against London - he just had to get up and running, he has got the smell of goals back and hopefully he can keep it going.”

The Fenagh’s man goal scoring exploits took the pressure off Darragh Rooney who was bottled up by Wexford’s Eoin Porter but Moran emphasised the other work Rooney did for his team: “Darragh did cut a frustrated figure but our second goal, Darragh turns the ball over in the corner back position and we go up the pitch and Ryan scores the goal.

“Nobody sees the Darragh Rooney incident but he worked hard for the team, he did other jobs, it wasn’t his best performance. He kicked a vital free to keep us in it near the end. I once heard Michael Murphy say you need to look for other jobs because sometimes you’re not going to be the star man and in fairness to Rooney, I think he did it.”

Having that one-two punch in O’Rourke and Rooney underlines the strength of Leitrim’s attack according to the manager: “That is the thing about having two really strong scoring forwards who are fit and ready to go. If you were watching our last two games, you’d earmark Darragh but all of a sudden, now Ryan has to go. We’ve Evan Sweeney, Barry McNulty, Darragh, Ryan, Riordan O’Rourke - we’ve got options there. The key thing is to keep them on the field.”

Moran also revealed that Leitrim actively targeted the centre of the Wexford defence: “We identified that Wexford like to carry the ball and that is probably why we created so many goal chances, the lads are smart boys, they can see that these chances are there. We knew they’d happen on the other side, that we’d get the goal chances but we knew they’d come at us.

“I knew Paraic Hughes was a good footballer, didn’t realise he was as good as what he showed. When the fight was on there today, he was driving them on - an exceptional player but we’ve one or two exceptional players ourselves.”

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The Leitrim manager is also happy that he may finally have a full deck to choose from: “My fellas have been really, really good. McNulty has presented every time we’ve asked him to present. Jack Foley plays an All-Ireland Freshers Final on Wednesday, he’ll be looking to come to training, that’s how committed these guys are, they haven’t missed a beat but the plan coming together, we’ll see. 

“We’ve done well, injury wise we’ve a lot of guys coming back - Prior back is huge for us, Adam back is huge for us, Mark Plunkett you can see what he brings. Hopefully get Pearce Dolan back next week - Cillian McGloin, Jack Flynn was running today, we’d love to have a full deck to pick from.”