As he weakened, Old Moran became afraid of his creditors. Bills piled up while he tried to make provision for a modest retirement. Although by no means an imprudent man, neither was he a stranger to kicking cans down the road and paying off a little here and there.The trouble was that when his employers – with what he felt was more relief than regret – wrote his last pay cheque, the means to service ongoing liabilities would become constrained, if not completely undermined.Originally, he had viewed all of this as tediously pessimistic. Of course, he would command a nice share of the freelance work on offer, what with his “contacts” and the high if wary regard in which he was held in the world of Gaelic games.It had been in trying to firm up a few “projects” that a distinctly uneasy feeling “came o’er him stealing”.Match reports which would be needed in abundance once the club championships got under way, appeared to be regarded of as much value as international agreements signed by US president Donald Trump.He could not work out whether the match fee of “five guineas” reflected how long since the markings rate was struck or an effort to make a scandalously small sum of money appear “ironically” retro.Still, a few of those and there would be a butcher’s bag of “cheap cuts” ideal for slow cooking, a task Young Mrs Moran regarded with nearly as much distress as the offspring of the animals from whom the cheap cuts had been removed. The fear of God was becoming an ever more pressing issue for Old Moran and the older he got, the more easily it was put into him, as opposed to his young carefree days when as Youthful Moran, he cared little for the chains of convention.But, but. The business was clearly not suited to a senior practitioner more likely to be found wandering in the moonlight of a locked, deserted stadium than “filing” a match report, player ratings and quotes simultaneously “on the whistle” as younger colleagues could effortlessly do.Last stop on Old Moran's extended career in journalism. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho