THEY say you sometimes have to take a step back to move forward.
In Allan Moore’s case, it’s had to be a giant leap backwards. Almost the entire length of the Scottish Professional Football League.
Within just over a year, he’s gone from a close battle for promotion to the top flight to the game’s bottom division.
It may seem like a dramatic drop – but as the Arbroath boss recently collected his League Two manager of the month award, he could probably say it’s been worth it.
It’s 17 months since a James Craigen goal for Partick Thistle was the only one of the game against Moore’s Morton side at Firhill. It realistically meant that four games from the end of the season, the Greenock side had lost out on the First Division title to the Jags.
Seven disastrous months down the line from there, the manager who kept the Cappielow club competing at the top for much of season 2012/13 was out. Key players from the title bid went elsewhere, others arrived who didn’t cut the mustard. A 5-1 defeat at home to Livingston was the last straw, although it didn’t stop the season from continuing catastrophically under Kenny Shiels, and ending in relegation.
For a football man like Moore, the rest of the season out of the game would have seemed like a long time. Then an unexpected chance came his way, more than 100 miles northeast of Greenock.
Arbroath wanted him to replace Paul Sheerin, who left to become a youth coach at Aberdeen.
It was two divisions down from the league he’d managed Morton in for three and a bit years. And the Red Lichties themselves were in something of a wilderness, relegated from League One at the end of last season.
But it was a challenge worth taking on for Moore, who is now finding out that it’s quite a good time to be a Scottish club who play in maroon.
Along with Hearts, Arbroath are the only team in the country still with a 100 per cent league record. It was that form which saw their gaffer named as League Two’s top man for August.
It doesn’t complete a transformation in fortunes for Moore after his dismissal from Morton last season. Promotion might be required to do that. But as it stands, it’s going as well as it can.
The Gayfield Park club have won their opening four league fixtures well, by all accounts playing some excellent stuff.
That’s a better start than Moore’s Morton had at the start of their push for promotion in season 2012/13. It took them until their fourth league match to register a victory, 3-0 at home to Dumbarton.
At times during that campaign, the Greenock side were almost unplayable. Goals were going in for fun, defeats were few and, as the season progressed, they were in the thick of the race with Thistle.
Then one April night at Firhill, the dream didn’t die, but its situation was critical. Partick Thistle, already two points clear at the top, won 1-0 with Craigen’s late first half goal in front of a crowd of more than 9,000. They went on to win the title 10 days later.
So Morton had to plot another push for the silverware. But if they wanted to have a realistic chance of doing that, they’d have to hang on to the key players who got them so close.
Guys like Michael Tidser, Peter MacDonald and Martin Hardie were little short of critical if they were to match or better their achievements of 2012/13. Even Peter Weatherson’s experience upfront was crucial.
But none of them stayed. They went to Rotherham United, Dundee, Airdrie and Annan Athletic respectively, with others also leaving. And Morton suffered.
Moore’s gamble on largely unknown players like Tomas Peciar, Michal Habai and Kabba Modou Cham backfired as the side which challenged for the previous season’s title collapsed.
By the time Morton rolled up at Dumbarton on Saturday, August 24, it was obvious to everyone in attendance that this wasn’t the same Greenock team as last season. Sons eased to a 3-1 victory over what was a shadow of the Cappielow team of months before.
Morton did beat Sons when the sides next met, at Cappielow in November, by a 2-0 scoreline, but that was only their second win of a floundering league season.
And two weeks later, Livingston inflicted Morton’s second 5-1 defeat within just over a month. The end.
For the first time since 2002, before he became manager of Stirling Albion, Moore was out of football.
Having been in the game for 11 years, the remaining six months of the season would have been tough.
However, an unexpected lifeline was to come from Arbroath where, despite automatic relegation, the board were prepared to keep faith with Sheerin as manager.
The lure of managing a development squad at Pittodrie proved too much for the Red Lichties gaffer, who led his team to the 2011 Third Division title and then to the promotion play-off places in the Second Division a year later.
Having won the League Two (then Third Division) title with Stirling Albion in 2004, Moore was the man they chose to task with bringing similar success to Gayfield this time around.
And so far, despite a 7-0 defeat by Sheerin’s Aberdeen in a pre-season friendly, it’s not going too badly, with Arbroath enjoying a squad of youth and experience.
Guys like David Crawford, Paul McManus and Bobby Linn have all won promotion at this level before. Kevin Nicoll has done it a league higher, with Dumbarton, when they beat off Sheerin’s Red Lichties side to win the play-offs.
The youth comes from prospects like Kevin Buchan, who has been among the goals so far, and Simon Murray, scorer of a fine individual effort in the recent 3-1 win at home to Montrose.
Before that game against the Gable Endies, Berwick, Albion Rovers and Queen’s Park were all victims of the Gayfield club’s promising start to the season. Further evidence of that now sits on Moore’s desk in the form of his manager of the month trophy.
Arbroath are at home to East Fife this Saturday in what, before the season, many may have thought would be an early clash of the promotion contenders.
The Fifers, for whatever reason, are struggling so far. Arbroath aren’t.
A fifth victory, of course, won’t clinch title, just as much as it won’t rule East Fife out of a revival which leads them to promotion.
However, for Moore, it can be more evidence that sometimes, taking a step back is worth it.
The Dumbarton Terrace 