By Peter Makem
Fifty years ago, back in 1975, Annaclone man Ray Morgan engineered the first of his five All-Ireland college Hogan Cup victories, and the first of his eight Ulster MacRory Cup wins as manager of St Colman’s College Newry. During that reign, which lasted until his retirement in 2005, he also took up the Burren challenge and won two All-Ireland club championships in 1986 and 1988 as a trainer, as well as three provincial club titles.
From the very beginning, competitive Gaelic football at the college for Ray Morgan was equal to the curriculum subjects and to the traditional college emphasis on the arts, on music, drama, opera, and choral. The process of achieving Corn na nÓg and Rannafast medals, MacRory and Hogan cup medals was as important and educational as A and GCSE levels. Each year he took on the burden of expectation, started afresh with a new group, and applied his triple formula of patience, concentration, and determination, knowing that no ambitions can be realized completely outside these factors.
On that educational journey, he was insistent that competitive Gaelic football provides a natural scope for disciplined teamwork, for the perfection of the individual within the group, and for serious personal responsibility and challenge. And out of this, life-long friendships were created, memories made from the bond and lore of the battles, a passport of belonging that never goes out of date.
Ray Morgan was no stranger to Gaelic football when he was appointed MacRory Cup manager at St Colman’s in 1972 by the then President Fr. John Treanor, in succession to Gerry O’Neill. A former pupil of the college who won two Rannafast and one MacRory medal, as well as minor, U-21, and senior medals with his native Down. Before him, his father Dan played for Down in the Ulster senior finals of 1942 and ’44, while his uncle Brian was the celebrated corner forward on the All-Ireland Down teams of 1960 and 1961.
Three personalities, in particular, influenced him: his father Dan, Fr. John Treanor, who taught him the footballing ropes at the college, and Jim McKeever, who trained so many teachers in the skills of Gaelic football at St Joseph’s Training College in Belfast. He was inheriting a formidable burden: an All-Ireland Hogan Cup victory won five years previous in 1967, under Fr Treanor and Gerry O’Neill, and seven MacRory Cup wins from the beginning.
But there was another inheritance — a philosophy of conduct, that a good college image was critical, to win with dignity and, if necessary, lose with dignity. On the day of his appointment, Fr. Treanor quietly told Ray: “By the way, you’ll lose more than you’ll win.”
Pete McGrath was captain of Ray Morgan’s first MacRory Cup side in 1972 and later assisted Ray in the overall MacRory and Hogan Cup management. Ray, who is now 80 years of age, explained his philosophy on coaching in his own words and was keen to give credit to his players and the fellow members of his coaching staff who helped St Colman’s achieve remarkable levels of success.
“I realized early on that much more than medals, the notion of belonging was the key to inspiration. Along the corridors of the college are the photographs of the victorious past teams. Everybody passes them and reads the names of college immortality. I have often kept these final few words for the pre-match talk – ‘do you too want to be there on that wall, to be named forever.’ It helped rejuvenate every generation.
“To win an All-Ireland at any grade in any sport calls for a long haul and boundless concentration. In team sport, it also demands an element of luck, the rub of the green. I applied the same formula year after year unto whatever new players came along. Naturally, I always saw possibilities with an outstanding finisher, or several of them, and I had many of these, but that’s when the same hard slog began.
“A team had to be honed in every aspect in order to realize the benefit of the rare finisher, and with a training emphasis on the following strict principles: sheer fitness, boundless practice of ball handling, training to keep the goals intact, not to foul the opposing forwards, and not send high speculative shots toward the square but ten yards in front of the forward. But I preached raw hard work constantly as I do for the boys’ studies. You don’t get anywhere in life without the hard work at sheer training, at tactics, support play. All players are of equal performance in the creation of a team.”
In the rest of the article read what Ray thought of the group of Burren players that he coached, and why they were so successful.
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