MCSHEA'S SAY: Former Donegal manager Mickey Moran is the maestro of Ulster club football

Club Championship success does not require a significant population but a good manager is critical to success.

Looking at the provincial champions, the four teams who have qualified for the semifinals of the All -Ireland club championship are interesting as two are city-based, Kilmacud Crokes in Dublin and St Finbarr’s from Cork, while Kilcoo, the Down champions, and Roscommon’s Padraig Pearse’s - the Connacht winners - are from the country.

All four teams no doubt see players playing for their clubs as a labour of love. Players really enjoy the crack and representing your area is a special privilege. Winning a provincial club championship is a great honour, while managing teams to reach the pinnacle in their province is equally gratifying.

Watching Mickey Moran, the Kilcoo manager, on the line last Sunday, one could only admire the Derry man for his lifelong commitment to Gaelic football. Firstly, as a fine player with his native Derry and in a long and distinguished managerial career, which included looking after Donegal until 2002.

Managing a football team, any football team, is a huge challenge and it takes very hard work to gain respect. A manager is confronted with a group of lads all from different walks of life.

They have different backgrounds, different personalities, different attitudes and different personal stories. Some are working, some are not, some are students, some are married and some are single.

It can be an enormous task to mould them into a team but the one thing that unites them is that they want to play football and are prepared to make huge sacrifices to be successful.

In Kilcoo’s case they had won nothing for a very long time but they have dominated Down football winning 10 championships in the last 13 years - an incredible achievement. In his capacity as their manager Moran is much more than a coach and a trainer.

He is also a father figure, a boss , a motivator, a counsellor and a friend. Moran’s basic rule seems to be to never lose sight of what is best for the team, while the brand of football that Kilcoo plays clearly demonstrates that everyone is tuned in on the same wavelength.

Kilcoo is a team at the heart of country football, a team which constantly regenerates itself from its own resources.
In Kilcoo the GAA club has built a focal point for itself, a place where the people come together and take their energy from their passionate pride in the place. Looking at the excellence of their football against Derrygonnelly, it will take a very good side to end their interest in this year's club championship.

Kilmacud Crokes are also a club to be admired, based in the heart of south Dublin. A few years ago they were creative as one of the first clubs to have a bar and they also built tennis courts, a swimming pool and community centre. This strategy was necessary because in south Dublin other influences were greater than ever before and Kilmacud spotted the need to offer facilities, which may have seemed ahead of their time but were very necessary to attract the youth of the area to Gaelic football and hurling.

The fact that they are now Dublin champions and on the cusp of an All-Ireland final is a clear endorsement of their vision and strategic thinking.

Devotion
For those who enjoy a good book I can strongly recommend Devotion, a memoir written by Tyrone’s three-time All-Ireland winning manager Mickey Harte. The loss of his daughter Michaela is confronted by Mickey and he also gives a detailed account of his last years with Tyrone. This is one of those books, when I picked it up, I found it very difficult to put down. It’s a most enjoyable read.