David Moran opens up on injury nightmare that caused three lost years with Kerry

Lee Costello

“For three years in a row though, I had to ring the Kerry manager and say that I was gone for the year.”

David Moran retired at the very top, winning his third All-Ireland with Kerry and leaving the inter-county scene healthy, fit and relatively unscathed.

However, it wasn’t always as straightforward for the high-fetching midfielder who had a torrid time with injuries early in his career that saw him miss consecutive seasons with Kerry, and barely play at all over a three year period.

Speaking on the latest episode of the GAA Hour, thanks to #AIB TheToughest, the Kerry legend revealed what went wrong back then.

“I did my cruciate in a league game in 2011 in April, and I was just coming back in March 2012 and I did it again,” said Moran.

“When I was coming back at the start of 2013, we were playing a challenge game and I tore a retina in my eye, so I had played against Armagh in the league in 2011, and didn’t play for Kerry again until the All-Ireland quarter final against Cavan in 2013.

“It was very difficult but you just have to get on with it, I was out for so long, I needed to get my knees right and my eye right – even if I never went back playing football, I wanted to get it right for general life.

“It was just a case of getting back and at no stage did I think that this was going to be career limiting, and if I wanted to go back in I always believed that I would get back into a physical condition that I would be able to compete and luckily I had.

“For three years in a row though, I had to ring the Kerry manager and say that I was gone for the year which wasn’t pretty, but look, I got them all out of the way in a three year period, and I had been lucky enough with injuries since.

Cruciate injuries have been the bane of GAA careers, and over the years there have been many different methods to try and tackle the issue.

Bernard Brogan revealed in his book that he was offered the chance to either take the conventional surgery, or rehab the muscles around the knee, making them so strong that they could get back quicker without the operation.

Brogan went with the surgery in the end, and Moran reveals that he too was considering an alternative option.

“For the rehab side of things, and this was 10 years ago so it might be different now, but you had that option of rehab if it was a partial tear, and not completely severed.

“Mine had been completely severed, and I had been in Australia the first time visiting my friend Tommy Walsh who was playing for the Swans and I ended up talking to a guy over there and he had done this LARS treatment, which is like a false cruciate.

Using LARS ligaments for ACL surgery can be performed using minimally invasive surgery (All-Inside ACL Reconstruction), which involves a smaller incision than the conventional ACL surgery, and therefore should theoretically take less time to recover.

However, Moran decided against this approach and went with the tried and trusted method.

A place in the All-Ireland Final officially up for grabs! Former Kerry football star, David Moran pictured today ahead of the 2023 GAA All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Semi-Final which takes place this Sunday in Croke Park.

“That’s what was ‘in’ for the professional athletes down there at that time, but I was only 22 or 23, was I going to try something new, like you would be back in 12 weeks with this kind of unproven thing, and i just said that I would get it done the conventional way, or the right way, or whatever, and believe that it is going to work.”

You can listen to the full discussion on the GAA Hour now.