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There are scores of names whose personas stand taller than their peers at Liverpool Football Club. Players whose names you can readily list in large groups as being outstanding or solid or loyal. But there is also a smaller list.
The smaller list is reserved for those with personas that now tower over Anfield, the ones who did it on the pitch, all for the club, all for the love and then spent a lifetime in service to making Liverpool a great football team. They are the old guard. They are the grandfathers. They are the legends. They are the success stories and the black and white pictures. They are the history and the lore of the boot room.
They are Liverpool. Inseparable. Without them it’s just walls and grass and people who work at Melwood for a few years.
But there always must come a point of separation. A point when presence is replaced with memory because time, moving on, refuses to bring your body any further.
For Ronnie Moran that point in time was today, March 22, 2017. The man known as Mr. Liverpool was a denizen of the storied boot room. He was a very highly regarded coach after his playing days, having made his debut for Liverpool at the age of eighteen in 1952.
Moran is credited as being the guy who turned Jamie Carragher into a center back.
In his own tribute to Moran, Jamie said, “There was always a feeling at the club that if Ronnie said it, it would be fine.”
After Ronnie retired he was known to still visit Melwood regularly, but always called ahead.
“When he stopped in the coaching role,” said Carragher, “he’d obviously like to try and keep himself fit and he’d been at Melwood nearly every day of his life. So, he’d come and walk around and still be a part of things.
“But he wouldn’t just turn up, he’d always ask the manager to make sure it was okay. Whoever it was at that time, Gerard Houllier, Rafa Benitez. Right up to Brendan Rodgers as well.”
You never like to hear of the passing of a club icon. But if you have any Ronnie Moran thoughts or feels we’d certainly hear those.