Paul Fennessy

24 AUGUST 2021 was a momentous day in the footballing life of two Irish teenagers.

In the 68th minute of an FA Cup match away to Cardiff, a 17-year-old Andrew Moran was introduced off the bench for his Brighton debut.

Some 13 minutes later, Evan Ferguson — younger than Moran by a year and four days — made his first-team bow.

It was a testament to the talent of both that they were afforded this opportunity so early in their careers.

Yet the players’ differences were as stark as their similarities.

Ferguson had made headlines as a 14-year-old, having been handed a senior debut by Bohemians in a friendly with Chelsea.

He moved to Brighton at 16, despite interest from a host of other top clubs including Manchester United, Liverpool and Celtic.

While highly technically proficient, Ferguson’s acceleration to the top was aided by impressive physical attributes that were developed at an early age.

Moran was the opposite of his future Brighton teammate in this regard.

St Joseph’s Boys coach Mick Browne remembers first encountering the player as a 12-year-old during the club’s open day.

“I’d already received the phone call from a coach who knew the family,” Browne tells The 42. “And he kind of said to me: ‘Look, I know you like the small technical players and size doesn’t come into it with you. Would you have a look at this lad?’

“On the pitch, you could see he was technically really good, very confident on the ball.

“He was so small though, it was strange. I always liked the small technical type of player. Andrew was even smaller, he was so diminutive. But he was just so technically good that we said: ‘We’ll take him. We can help develop him and work with him.’”

Moran wanted to play as a central midfielder or a number 10. The club, however, opted to put him at right-back “for a year or two” initially.

“We’d use them as wing-backs, even though they were right fulls. There was a lot of running involved. And Andrew took to it like a duck to water. He was always just so eager and determined. You could ask him to do anything. And he played really well there. And after two seasons, you could see he was getting stronger. And we put him back into that midfield area. And by god, he just shone.

“You could see as he started to grow, his speed — the uncanny ability he has is he is actually quicker running with the ball than without it.”

On the positional switch, Browne adds: “We wouldn’t pigeonhole players. We had younger players and smaller players before Andrew in different squads like Brandon Kavanagh, who’s with Derry now, and Ryan Burke, who’s with Waterford.

“They had their designated position, but we would move them around just to help their development and see if they would show anything different in those other areas and we knew Andrew would eventually go into that space, but when we put him in, we didn’t think it was going to be as successful so early.”

Moran (left) pictured as a youngster.

Despite the fact that many of the best footballers in the world over the past decade are small — that great Barcelona team with Lionel Messi, Xavi and Andrés Iniesta is the prime example — Browne believes there is still a problem in Irish underage football with less physical youngsters being overlooked.

“I’m only talking about five years ago. I don’t want to mention clubs’ names but they didn’t really fancy him. The club he left for us was because he was too small. So we were only too happy to take him in on the back of that phone call and on what we saw of him. Because he’s not going to be small forever, and the best players in the world are [nearly] all small anyway.

“So there’s not as much as there was but there’s still that [tendency to ask]: ‘How big is he? How tall is he?’

“I never subscribed to it, to be honest with you. The game is played in the head an awful lot. Intelligence is a huge part of it. And you could see, he was football intelligent.”

Will Clarke, currently the FAI’s club academy manager, previously served as director of football at St Joseph’s Boys, working closely with Browne and the rest of the coaching staff there.

He agrees with the suggestion that Moran tended to be overlooked by some because of his size.

“He was quite small, but anybody that worked with Andy on a week-to-week basis knew how good he was.

“I don’t think people who didn’t see him as regularly appreciated how good he was. But technically, relative to his age, he was always an outstanding player.”

Clarke backed the coaches’ decision to start him off as a right-back, believing he would be ready to play in midfield eventually.

He also shares Browne’s view that in Irish football, the smaller players are sometimes prematurely dismissed.

“People judge and evaluate players based on what they see in front of them today, which isn’t a good indicator of long-term success. When you’re looking at a player, you’ve got to predict the type of player that you think they might be able to become, and I think you always have to focus on their strengths as opposed to their weaknesses.

“I think too many people focus on what players don’t possess, as opposed to what they do. But I think it is changing, albeit not quickly enough, to be honest with you.

“Andy was probably in the right place at the right time, in terms of being at Joey’s and obviously working with the likes of Mick, and the fact that even I was working in a full-time position at Joey’s, so it was obviously part of my job to make sure that the kids in the club got the best opportunities they could whereas if Andy was at a club whereby they didn’t have a full-time director of football, the opportunity may have passed him by.

“It is getting better. But we still have a little bit to do in terms of talent ID.”

Moran pictured on the right.

The reservations certain coaches had over Moran’s lack of physicality would not have gone unnoticed by the player himself. At that age, especially, to defy the opinions of adults with perceived expertise in their area of interest requires considerable mental resilience, which the Joey’s youngster evidently possessed.

But as with any young player, Moran was far from the finished product and needed to work on his defending in particular.

“Like a lot of kids that age, they want to go forward with the ball, and they’ll run all day if they’re going towards the goal,” says Browne. “But the transitions to defend and getting back around [are a challenge].

“But he did learn it so quickly. And again, he was in that right back position where he had to get in and cover.

“We kept saying to him, we want you to attack, but you’re a defender first. So he did learn a bit of that.

“I know over at Brighton, they say he still needs to work a little bit on his defending and that would be a different level of defending.

“I have a video clip (see below) that shows how far he came in that department because we have a corner and Andrew is at the edge of the box and the ball breaks the other side of the pitch but he tracks his player 80 yards full sprint, and basically shepherds the ball to the goalkeeper.

“So the little clips say more than I could.”

St Joseph’s Boys and Bray Wanderers had a partnership at the time, meaning Moran eventually started playing for the latter at underage level, with Browne continuing to coach him.

There was one particular game — a big match against Bohemians — that his coach really started to believe this young talent had the potential to make it as a professional footballer.

“We knew he was going to be a good player. But that day, he was absolutely outstanding.

“Luckily enough, the game was videoed, and we were able to get those clips and I believed it so much from around them.

“And this is U15s and we even got that clip sent to Portugal because our former chairman and coach George Forsyth has links to Benfica. And no one else was really taking much notice, again I think because of his size.

“Our director of football sent it to Brighton’s [then-Academy Manager] John Morling, who used to work for the FAI.

“Will was saying: ‘His coaches are raving about him. Have a look at this lad. They think he’s really good.’

“In fairness to John, he took him over and again, like us, just went ‘wow’.

“But we’d been telling anyone who would listen from 14 on, this lad is really special.

“We knew he would adapt. It was like him going from right back into centre-mid. And then it was going from schoolboy football into the national league. It was seamless for him. Any challenge, any difficulty, he smashed it, he just got there. He just found a way of just being himself and showing how good he was.”

Moran’s talent was obvious and he went on to make a handful of senior appearances for Bray, debuting with the League of Ireland club when he was 15 years and 307 days old.

He was lucky in the sense of being part of the 2003-born age group — the last who were eligible to move to a British club at 16 before the Brexit ruling meant Irish youngsters had to stay at home until 18.

Yet persuading a team from abroad to take a chance on Moran was still not straightforward.

“The challenge was trying to make other people aware of how good he was,” says Clarke.

“It was always a constant battle, pushing Andy, because we certainly believed in his potential and the one thing with Andy, every sort of hurdle or challenge he’s ever met, he’s overcome it. And so his ability was never in question.

“The big thing that Andy had to face was making sure that he had the opportunity to showcase his ability.

“I have a lot of contacts in England. I obviously would have had quite a few players in England over the years.

“I would have exhausted the list of people that I was trying to get an opportunity for Andy. And to be fair to John Morling, I had a really good relationship with John, I would have worked with John previously in the FAI.

“And so to be honest with you, I actually called in a favour with John to make sure that Andy got the opportunity with Brighton because literally nobody else was interested. And again, it was all based on his size as opposed to his ability.

“So it was basically my relationship with John. And to be fair to John, John was good enough to give Andy an opportunity by way of a trial.

“That was fortunate again, in that sense that he got the opportunity.”

Moran (left) with Leigh Kavanagh (right)

Moran joined Brighton as part of a deal along with the signing of fellow promising Irish youngster Leigh Kavanagh.

Yet despite some people’s reservations, the Knocklyon native has flourished since signing for the Premier League side in July 2020, with his first-team debut coming just over a year later.

“The plan initially when Andy went to Brighton was to give him a little bit of time, that they would play him down with the U15s team in his first year, but when he got over about three or four or five weeks into having moved over in the summer, everybody over there could see how good he was.

“So that plan was quickly aborted. And he basically went straight into the youth team.”

The theme of Moran exceeding expectations every time he moves up a level is a recurring one.

“My issue with the whole thing is, how many other Andy Morans have we missed out on over the years?” asks Clarke. “I’m sure, there have to be hundreds, anybody who ever worked with Andy could tell what a really good player he was technically.

“I know he still has a long way to go. But for me, of all the players that I’ve seen in Ireland in my time over the last 15 years, Andy Moran is, by far and away the best technical player that we have.

“Probably the only reason why he hasn’t broken through and got as many minutes is that he’s still developing and to be fair to Brighton, I think they’ve managed his development quite well.”

And over in England, Moran continues to impress.

“What probably struck us first was Andy was one of the smaller players in the team but had this wonderful technical ability and was a real intelligent footballer,” says Brighton U21 coach Shannon Ruth.

“It was his ability to navigate himself through the game without his physical size being a hindrance.

“He thought quicker than everybody else, he dealt with the ball and could hide the ball from the opponent and make real positive actions and impacts in each game.

“And that was really eye-catching for us. Along with his love for the game and his passion for playing really.”

And a key question is whether Moran can now emulate Ferguson by establishing himself as a first-team regular at Brighton without going out on loan and getting senior experience elsewhere.

Already he has appeared on the first team’s bench on many occasions and made a Premier League debut this season — coming on as a substitute during Brighton’s 4-1 win over Everton in January — while the Ireland U21 international last month signed a new four-year contract with the club, which was another indication of the significant progress he has made.

“What is important for Andy is to continue and get some senior exposure or experience,” adds Ruth. “Whether that’s with our first team or on loan it’s yet to be decided. But one thing we do know about Andy is right now he is ready for men’s football and the progress he’s made probably demands that’s in the next part of his journey.”

While the usual caveats apply, of all the people interviewed for this article, Browne is the most unequivocal in suggesting his former player has the potential to go far in the game.

“If he was playing first-team football now, I would say to you, he’ll play for Ireland. And I do believe that he will play for Ireland. I think he’ll be a regular in the Irish senior team. But I’m always very wary because things can turn so quickly.

“You just hope that Brighton put him in there, and he smashes it like he’s always done. And then the next step is international football but I’d have to say, out of any player that I’ve ever coached and there have been a few who’ve gone away, I’ve never been as confident as anybody being a first-team Premier League footballer than Andrew.”