Meath forward Jordan Morris will be aiming for Leinster glory next summer but right now his focus is on trying to help Cavan champions Kingscourt Stars conquer Ulster.
Morris scored 0-9 to help Kingscourt overcome Gowna in the Cavan SFC final two weeks ago, securing the club’s first county triumph since 2015.
The All-Star nominee grew up in Kingscourt but when the family moved, so too did his footballing allegiances, Morris playing for Nobber just across the border in Meath.
He won a Meath intermediate championship with the club in 2019, but transferred to Kingscourt in 2022.
RM Block
“I lived there until I was 10 or 11,” recalls Morris. “I would have grown up going to Cavan games with grandad and uncles and Dad, and different things like that.”
His father played for Cavan at minor and under-21 level, but green and gold were always Morris’s colours.
“No, definitely not,” he laughs when asked if playing for Cavan was ever an option. “I’ve been playing with Meath since I was under-14. When that started, that was always the goal.”
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But one of the motivations behind his move to play club football in Cavan was to try help Kingscourt win their first senior title since 2015.
“Ten years for the size of the club is probably a bit too long. We’d been in five or six finals since that and lost them all. The previous one was in 2023, we got a bit of a hockeying then, so we kind of had to right that wrong.”
And yet in March there were fears his season was over after he suffered a serious knee injury in Meath’s league game against Louth. Scans subsequently showed a grade-two tear in his ACL and PCL but surgery wasn’t required.
“Straight away I thought that was it,” he says of his season. “And so did a lot of physios. They thought everything was ruptured but then they got scans and it wasn’t as bad, so I was lucky enough.
“There was a fairly intense rehab programme put in place. I only got back on the pitch five or six days before the Leinster final and was put through my paces. Thank God it held up.”
Morris went on to deliver one of the best individual displays of the championship in Meath’s All-Ireland quarter-final win over Galway at Croke Park in June, scoring 1-6.
“I probably had the best game of my life that day,” he says. “I don’t know whatever mad way the mind works, you get a few scores and you think you’re unstoppable. It was strange enough to be fair, it was an unreal feeling.”
Kingscourt will play the Fermanagh champions in an Ulster quarter-final next month. Their Erne County opponents will be decided on Saturday after Derrygonnelly and Belleek played out a draw in last weekend’s first attempt.
“Hopefully we’re not done but it was a nice way to finish things off [winning a Cavan title]. We’ll look to push on now in a couple of weeks and see what we can do in Ulster.”
And when his season does finally end, Morris will be putting the boots away for a little while.
“I’m looking forward to a bit of a rest. I definitely do feel a bit fatigued. Not sure how long I’ll get but I’m sure Robbie [Brennan] will be keen for me to have a bit of a break.”
