Kevin Moran at 70 on his iconic career, life, deaths and the one moment he would love to relive

He turns 70 on Wednesday, this sunbeam of Irish life, one who lived beneath some of the loudest roars the triplet landmarks of his epic odyssey, Croke Park, Old Trafford or Lansdowne Road, have known.

Not that Kevin Moran, a vital and joyous spring bloom to this day surging through the blood he so frequently spilled on the battlefield, could be remotely confused with a museum piece.

He plays tennis every Friday, golf, twice or three times a week, while a Benjamin Button-like capacity to render the ticking clock impotent, prompted Niall Quinn to joke to me last week, "He looks about thirty-f***ing-eight!"

Half a century since he so memorably burst from the shadows of suburban Dublin and onto sporting Broadway - a 1976 summer of brilliant exhilaration - Moran retains a lean, fresh aspect that suggests he could reprise his role as a fizzing bundle of kinetic energy wrapped in a Sky Blue number six shirt.

"It doesn't bother me one iota," he says of the impending milestone birthday, "honestly, it means nothing. What matters is how you feel and I'm blessed that I feel great. The rest is just a number.

"We had a little celebration in Dublin last weekend. They say 70 is the new 50, but I said, 'no, it is the new 40.'

"There were a few pints and a singsong in O'Donoghue's last Saturday with a gang of lifelong friends. That old adage about Guinness being good for you definitely has merit.

"We have a golf society called The Snifflers. We visit a different county in Ireland every year to play golf. We are on year 24. It is Limerick this year. These are lads I went to school with in Drimnagh Castle and played football with for [Dublin schoolboy club] Rangers.

"A few come home from America and Spain for the week. We have two guitar players and one lad plays a ukulele. Some fabulous singers.

"As the years pass, as people you know pass away, you realise these friendships, these gatherings are vitally, vitally, important. They keep you young. They refresh you. They make you laugh. They are gold."

The perpetual echoes of his life of monumental sporting achievement continue to reverberate across the decades.

Moran's is a story from the imaginings of a dreamy comic strip artist, one given to madcap reverie.

Kevin Brannigan's warmly atmospheric 2023 documentary, Kevin Moran: Codebreaker, beautifully captures the wild improbability - the impossibility - of his journey along the sporting bandwidth.

A dual All-Ireland winner, a dual FA Cup winner, an Allstar, a 71-times capped Irish international, a sturdy foundation stone of the team and movement Jack Charlton built, an ever-present at Euro '88 and Italia '90.

In swapping Dublin for Manchester United, transitioning from dashing goliath of Gaelic games to unbreakable Stretford End sentinel, Moran left The Rolling Stones to join The Beatles.

A tousle-haired Mick Jagger of midsummer one minute, aboard a Yellow (or red) Submarine to Old Trafford the next.

Unthinkable in this social media age, in 1978 he ventured home from Manchester to play for the Dubs without (at least until the final) even telling anybody at United.

These days, the John Lennon composition that might resonate most with Moran is the autobiographical, introspective, wistfully poetic "In My Life."

"There are places I'll remember/All my life, though some have changed."

And later...

"Some are dead and some are living/In my life, I've loved them all."

Of all the ingredients that contributed to the story of Moran's life less ordinary, the one that endures is the alchemy of love.

It bursts abundantly from him in the emotional word pictures he paints of the fallen titans with whom he shared a Dublin dressing-room, Anton O'Toole, Paddy Cullen, Brian Mullins and Sean Doherty.

Without them, Heffo's old team can seem like a ship without its masts.

Moran still sees them in their prime, gladiators in the arena, athletic and handsome, emerging from the desert of Dublin's recent history, spreading a fever of belonging across the city.

Their lives stretching out before them. Forever young.

"It is the only thing that makes me sad, thinking about those lads. There was something magical inside that dressing-room.

"In terms of banter there was nobody like Paddy and Jimmy Keaveney. What a double act. They would have you in gales of laughter. Half the time, they'd be having a go at each other.

"They were like a married couple, except married couples tend not to get on as well.

"The Doc used to collect me from my house and drive me to training. I was the youngest on the team and he was one of the oldest. But there was no age gap. Those drives over to Parnell Park thought me so much. About football and life. We got very close.

"Sean died suddenly. We were only in Kerry for a golfing match against the 1970s Kerry lads weeks before hand and he was in great form.

"Anton and Brian were two lads taken way too young. I get very, very upset thinking about them.

"Tooler was so laid back. He loved life. He was happy in the background, but he would have strong opinions and would come out with some great one-liners. A fabulous fella.

"Mullins was huge for me. The first time I walked into the dressing-room, he took me by the scruff of the neck and sat me down beside him. He said, 'I'll look after you.' What a footballer.

"His passing was such a shock. Brian had only retired and himself and his partner had made plans to travel. It was tragic."

But there was so much fun, too, flying-by-the-seat-of-the-pants days so at odds with todays micromanaged squads.

"My late brother Brendan brought some Cork lads up to the house for the 1976 All-Ireland. On the day of the match they are looking on with disbelief at me eating a full roast beef dinner, piled with roast potatoes, carrots, the works. Enough to feed an army.

"This is two hours before the match. My mother genuinely thought the bigger the match, the more you need to eat. So she kept filling the plate. And I kept eating.

"And then as a special treat, she brought out my favourite, a trifle. I horsed the whole lot down, two hours before the All-Ireland final, on the other side of the city. When you look back on it. Ignorance is bliss."

Friendships, those bone-deep connections you make on the sporting field, those are the memories Moran preserves in aspic.

I tell him how Paul McGrath once confided in me that he regards Kevin as a big brother, a life-raft in those dark interludes when addiction attached itself like a deadweight, threatening to drag a uniquely brittle Hercules under.

Emotion seeps from Moran: "I'm so pleased to hear that. We roomed together for 11 years. I kept an eye out for him when I had to. We still pick up the phone to each other.

"Paul is such a lovely, soft, gentle guy. That's the person. But then as a footballer, my God, he was absurdly brilliant. A genius. He had no clue how great he was. Such a humble fella."

Ask Moran what he recalls of those Mardi Gras Charlton years, days that carried a nation out of slumps and slouches, shedding national inferiorities, that were among the seeds from which a new Ireland of more confident self-expression grew, and his response is instant: "The team."

Niall Quinn recently set up a WhatsApp group of the players from those days of thunder and Moran rarely goes 24 hours without giggling as the old stories flood in, a refresher course in the times of their lives.

Back then, when having a few pints between games was not only not frowned upon, it was actively encouraged, the Irish squad had nights of mischief as valuable as any tactical masterclass.

"I've never known camaraderie like it. There was so much laughter. And the one resounding reason was Jack Charlton. Jack could be hilarious. Often unintentionally.

"Like the story of Bernie Slaven being upgraded to the subs bench at the last minute for the Turkish game that time poor Paul was in a bad way and couldn't get off the bus.

"Bernie was in a blind panic. He was saying, 'I can't go on Jack. I didn't think I was playing and I had my matchday shirt autographed by all the players. His jersey is covered in black marker.

"Another time he wanted to send Sheeds on during a game and Kevin turned to him and said, "but Jack, you didn't name me among the subs.'

"You couldn't make it up. The huge success we had was down to the fun we had together. We were a band of brothers. We cared for each other. That bond was our secret weapon."

At 70, the magical silhouette of his days in the arena sinking towards a glorious sunset, I offer him the chance to rewind to one moment, to revisit one location on the sacred stretch of ground he walked.

Moran is silent for, maybe 10 seconds, the various reels of the blockbuster boxset of his life unspooling in his mind's eye.

But for an exile with such a profound sense of home, a feeling undiluted even when he went to fight his battles in foreign lands, there can only be one choice.

"It has to be 1976. The city where I was born, where I grew up, where I had stood on The Hill watching the team only the year before. And now a Dublin shirt on my back, playing against Kerry.

"How could it get better than that? I always think that's how it must have been for Paul Scholes or Nicky Butt or the Nevilles. Lads with Manchester in the blood playing for United.

"You know people say you are either a glass half-full or glass half-empty man. But winning an All-Ireland with Dublin, looking at up at the Hill, I tell you my glass was so full, it was overflowing.."

Stand, with an imaginative ear, at the side of some men on the cusp of 70 and you might hear them creaking.

With Kevin Moran, they are only squeals and screeches of contentment.

A giant bewitched by the days and the friends his sporting adventures gifted him, a Dub and an Irishman who feels blessed, a creature who remains completely, infectiously in thrall to the idea of being alive.

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