[lfc-news] Moran memories are hard to rival - Post

Liverpool Daily Post, 10 Dec 2004
Moran memories are hard to rival
By Nick Hilton, Daily Post

AMONG the 40,000 who attend the 200th Merseyside Derby at Goodison
tomorrow, no-one will be able to look back on more first-hand experience of
the previous 199 games than Ronnie Moran.

A rough calculation would suggest Moran was probably involved in close to
100 of them as a player, captain, coach and, briefly, caretaker manager of
Liverpool.

He played in his first derby 50 years ago and dedicated his working life to
serving the club until retirement five years ago. For more than two decades
Moran was coach to the most successful club team English football has ever
produced.

Moran still regards that early encounter with Everton - an FA cup tie at
Goodison in 1955 - with special fondness, not least because Liverpool upset
all the odds by winning 4-0.

It was the only Merseyside derby played in a decade when the two clubs were
kept apart by diverging fortunes in the league. Everton dropped out of the
first division between 1951 and 54 and when they returned to the top
flight, Liverpool had just begun an exile that lasted until 1962.

Moran could also be described as the player who fired the starting pistol
on the last 42 years of continuous derby rivalry with a Goodison goal in 1962.

Strictly speaking, the Liverpool Floodlit Cup final of that year does not
count as a fully-fledged derby. But you could not tell that to the tens of
thousands of fans who packed into Everton's home to watch.

Moran recalled: "The match was played at the end of the '61/ 62 season,
after we had just won the second division title and promotion back to the
first division. It had been so long since the last derby that the game
caught people's imagination and both teams had their full first team out.
Even so, it was a massive gate.

"We won 1-0 from a free-kick I scored from about 35 yards out. "I was going
to chip the free-kick into the box but Gordon Milne, who was standing by
me, said: 'Why don't you have a go Ronnie.' So I did, and it flew in past
Gordon West."

Moran's playing career at Anfield began in 1949, when he joined as a
part-timer while serving an apprenticeship as an electrician. The decision
to turn professional was made in 1952.

He recalled: "I was on terms known as 14 and 11: you got £14-a-week during
the season and £11 during the summer weeks.

No-one in my era made a fortune out of the game in wages. I retired as a
player on £30-a-week. These days a decent first-team professional in the
Premiership can earn enough to keep him for life on a two-year contract.
Not that I'm complaining. The rewards are just very different now."

By the 1954/55 season, Moran was a regular in the Liverpool side in
Division Two. His life changed when Bill Shankly swept into Anfield in
1959. The Scotsman's arrival opened a period of upheaval among the playing
staff.

Moran recalled: "Bill moved a lot of players on. Some went because they
were not good enough. Some went because they were good players but did not
have the right attitude when things were difficult.

"On away trips I would room with Alan A'Court and we would chat about who
we thought might be the next ones out and whether it might be us."

Moran need not have worried. Shankly made him captain of the side that won
promotion in '62 and four years later offered him a job on the coaching staff.

Moran said: "It was only after I began coaching myself that I began to
realise why we had not been a winning team before Shanks arrived. I hadn't
really seen it as a player."

Moran recalls the view Shankly expounded to his players about derby games.
He said: "Shanks looked on a derby game the same as he would a game against
a league club or a team from the third division. It didn't matter whether
it was Everton, or Scunthorpe. He wanted to win every game, no matter what
it was. Even five-a-sides in train-ing."

But there was no doubting the Merseyside derbies of the Shankly era took on
a fire of their own. Moran is not a man given to exaggeration, but he said:
"Some of those games could have been bloodbaths. Some of the things that
went on in them could not happen now because too many players would be sent
off.

"It wasn't a case of players going around kicking each other. But they were
physically very competitive and the spectators were inclined to enjoy it
that way.

"There was very little segregation of the fans in those days. You did not
have cases of the away club being allocated 3,000 tickets. People queued up
at each ground to get a ticket. Families came together, some with blue
scarves, some with red. And I don't remember seeing any violence at a derby."

An intense but good-natured rivalry was also established among the coaching
staffs on derby day. Moran said: "You stuck up for your team and a few
verbals flew with the staff in the other dugout. But after the match you
would sit down with them and have a couple of beers.

"I think Liverpool were among the first clubs to start that after match
tradition with the boot room at Anfield. Bob Paisley and Joe Fagan
instigated it. Bill never used to come in. He did not drink. He would just
pop his head around the door.

"The visitors only stayed for around 20 minutes or so after a game. If it
was Everton for instance, we would have a drink and a natter about old
times. But we would not talk about the game that had just happened in the
afternoon. It was the same with other clubs.

"It was a kind of etiquette. You did not speak about any incidents. Maybe
when the opposition staff had gone, you might grumble to each other about a
controversial moment, or a refereeing decision."

From a vast treasure trove of derby memories as coach, Moran sets aside a
few more to add to the two from his playing days.

There is a 1-0 Liverpool win at Anfield on the morning of the Grand
National when David Fairclough ran through the Everton defence in the last
minute to score the winner.

And there is a 5-0 victory at Goodison in the early 1980s when Ian Rush
scored four times.

A more surprising inclusion is an FA Cup tie that took three games to be
resolved in 1991. Kenny Dalglish resigned as Liverpool manager after the
second game, a 4-4 draw at Good-ison, which led to Moran taking charge of
first-team affairs on a caretaker basis for several weeks.

Moran recalled: "I was 58 at the time when the chairman, Noel White asked
me to take over. I was happy to do it for a few weeks but I made it clear I
wasn't looking for the top job."

Liverpool lost the second cup replay to Everton in Moran's first game in
charge. There were other defeats in a mixed bag of results in which the
club posted their best ever away win in the league, 7-1 at Derby.

When the new manager Grame Souness arrived he kept Moran on the staff, just
as Dalglish, Fagan and Paisley had done before and as Roy Evans would do
again when his turn came in 1994.

The curtain fell on half a century of service to LFC as Moran approached
his 65th birthday just as the new regime of Gerard Houllier was being
ushered in in 1998.

In a gesture of respect Moran was granted the freedom to continue the habit
of a working lifetime by running around the perimeter of the Melwood
Training ground every day.

Those runs have become a walk taken twice a week in the years since Moran
suffered a heart condition. But the 74-year-old said: "While I have had to
slow down a bit, there is no problem. I am fine and still going strong."



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