I went to Ireland to kickstart my career but ended up being scared out my wits
It was creepy. There was a scraping sound on the walls at night
ASHORT hop from Scotland, a fresh environment, the prospect of a summer season and a club seemingly on the rise.
When Jordan Moore weighed up a move to Limerick at the turn of the year, there seemed little to suggest he’d regret stumping up for the modest air fare to take him across the Irish Sea.
If the 22-year-old’s presence at the PFA Scotland exit trials at Broadwood this week is enough to suggest all hasn’t exactly gone to plan, however, a 10-minute conversation with the former Dundee United striker rather underscores the point.
First, the good news. Currently 14 points ahead of the field in the League of Ireland First Division, Limerick look well on course to return to the top flight. Even though he only played a few games, Moore has no issue on that front.
As for the rest of it? Surreal would be one way of describing it. But you might also throw in scary, scandalous and supernatural.
That’s correct — supernatural. Because while footballers — in their own melodramatic way — like to talk about being ‘haunted’ by a miss or a save in a game, Moore genuinely believes the crummy digs were frequented by a ghost.
‘It was an old convent,’ he recalled yesterday. ‘The front garden was a graveyard. The other boys were all local, so I stayed there myself. I just had a room in an old chapel and it was scary at night because of all the ghost stories.
‘A nun had committed suicide in my room and the gravestone that was in the garden was overturned. One of the things it said was ‘Room 106’ — that was the room I was in.
‘I heard stuff all the time. There was the sound of scraping on the walls every night. I swear it’s true. I lasted three months.
‘My team-mates couldn’t believe I was living there but to rent somewhere was going to be £800 a month and, because I didn’t know how long I was going to be there, I decided to stay where I was.
‘I was there on my own pretty much all the time — and the place was massive. All the windows were smashed.
‘One time the manager came down to stay, but he decided he was never going to stay again. We had false hopes that they were going to do the place up like some five-star resort.’
Situated about 25 kilometres from Limerick, it’s fair to say that the small town of Bruff where the old convent was situated was anything but the Irish rural idyll Moore had envisaged.
‘On every second lamppost, there is a horse tied up,’ Moore explained. ‘There must be 20 horses in every street you walk down. Where we stayed, it was crazy. But if you tried to cut the horses loose, then they would kill you — supposedly.
‘It was the weirdest village ever. The locals would jump on the backs of horses and just ride along. There was more horses than cars.
‘One day, the police moved all the horses away. The next day, the guys who owned the horses smashed every shop and put all their cows in the shops and the schools.
‘It’s all true. The farmers who had cows in their fields put them in the shops and supermarkets, for revenge. The police gave them all the horses back and told them to behave.’
If it sounds like a scene from the wild west, Moore can attest to the fact it was all too real.
Such was the flimsy grasp the force of law and order seemed to have over the place that the Glaswegian would gladly have swapped the west of Ireland for pretty much anywhere else.
‘There was one pub there but the guy who ran it was a big gangster,’ he went on. ‘It was a case of if you went in, you didn’t get back out. So I just stayed in (the convent).
‘There was all sorts of things going on. Was I scared? Yeah, 100 per cent. I would lock the door and my window before going to bed.’
Despite success on the field, football provided little respite.
‘The fitness coach lived nearby, so he would pick me up in the morning,’ Moore (right) continued.
‘He would just laugh when I told him what was going on. Everyone would laugh at me staying there.
‘When I complained to the chairman, he pointed out that I had it for free and couldn’t complain.
‘I felt that I wasn’t treated well because I was there on my own. I felt they tried to take a loan of me a bit. I found getting my money a lot harder than the rest of them. I’d ask where the money was and they would say: “Ah, you’ll get it next week after the game”.
‘Then after the game, I would be taken to the burger van and they would whip out the coins: “Take that now and we’ll count it later”.
A sense of menace permeated every corridor of Limerick’s Thomond Park ground.
‘I remember a guy getting a treadmill in the place — supposedly he was in the IRA,’ Moore went on with remarkable candour. ‘He said to me: “If that gets broken, you are going in a box”. I was kind of laughing but he was being deadly serious.’
Understandably, Moore is keen to now talk about the episode in the past tense. As willing as he was to invite a little adventure into his life, the sums literally did not add up.
‘I told them I wasn’t staying in that place again and also that I couldn’t afford not to get my wages every month,’ he explained. ‘They wanted me to stay to the end of the season but it is more sane over here.’ You just wonder what else life can throw at Moore. Aged just 22, he has already battled back from skin cancer and got himself going again via loan spells with Airdrie, Dunfermline and Queen’s Park. A few bizarre months spent in the land that time forgot are unlikely to see him unravel. ‘Everything is perfect,’ he said of his health. ‘That is two years on from the second operation, so that is me back to full fitness. It took a while but I’m there. ‘I am going to Raith Rovers on Monday. Darren Jackson asked me to come in for preseason training and see what happens. It would be good if that happened but, if not, then maybe I would have to go down the leagues.’