Ian Morris: 'The biggest thing you've got to do is ignore the noise'

Andrew Dempsey reports from Tolka Park

First Division winning manager of 2019 Ian Morris admits that he had to ‘ignore the noise’ before the start of play this term with his Shelbourne side installed as pre-season title favourites.    

Despite much of the early hype surrounding the Reds, they got off to a slow start – with questions being raised about Morris during his first year of senior management.

“I remember speaking to Dave Henderson before the start of the season and the biggest thing you’ve got to do is ignore the noise,” Morris told extratime.ie on Saturday evening.

“Ignore anything social media wise and everything that’s going on from outside. We just believed in what we were going to do and believe in what you’re trying to bring, and I’ve done that this year.

“I’ve stayed away from everything; I’ve knuckled down and thankfully I’ve got good staff and players who have helped us produce it on the pitch.”

The rookie boss who has won a league title at his first attempt added; “The big moment for us this year was the three games before the mid-season break.

“We played Bray, Longford and Drogheda during the three and we talked about those games.

“We managed to take three wins out of that – going into the break winning and when we came back from the break, we won down at the Markets Field when Limerick were going well.

“That was massive for us, the momentum of those three games were huge and when we came back, we spoke about picking up where we left off and that’s what we did. We gained momentum and maintained it that was most important.”

However, prior to that moment, the Reds were at a crossroads as such following their defeat away to Cabinteely in May – which happened to be their penultimate league loss of the season.

“That was a frustrating night for us when we lost to Cabinteely at Stradbrook. A lot has been made about us over the season, but we’ve just knuckled down and put in performance after performance.

“We’ve been resilient when we’ve needed to be, and we’ve been ruthless when we’ve needed to be as well.

“We knew exactly what we were capable of and what we could produce, and we got the rewards for it on a night like tonight when you get a medal.

“You don’t get a medal and win leagues by accident and tonight we proved our worth.”