The story is often told how Lawrie McMenemy – out watching his son play in the local Tyro League – spotted Steve Moran playing for Sarisbury Sparks and at half-time promised the young striker a new pair of boots should he score a hat-trick in the second half. The feat was duly accomplished and young Steve not only had a pair of new boots but a new admirer. Academically inclined, he only signed professional terms after completing his studies at Prices College, but within a few months made his first team bow, off the bench, and scored at the far post with his first touch.

He was an insatiable scorer of goals, small and darting, he had an uncanny eye for goal and the ability to be in the right place at the right time.

“I am always at my best sniffing around the penalty area and I like to feed off a target man”, he said in 1985. Of course, having Kevin Keegan and Mick Channon alongside did his game no harm, but he thoroughly deserved the PFA Young-Player-Of-the-Year award in 1982, with Keegan taking the senior prize. The award came despite him missing the second half of 1981-82 with two cracked vertebrae which needed a spinal fusion operation. He returned the following season to hit 21 League goals which led to talk of a full England call up (he had won two England U21 caps), but he had to turn down an invite to be in the 22-man squad that toured South America, because his call-up came just before his wedding. However Lawrie McMenemy’s departure in the summer of 1985 plus a whole host of niggling injuries seemed to drain Steve’s confidence and

after an indifferent 1985-86 Chris Nicholl decided to sell him to Leicester for £300,000, a record for them.

After that Steve’s career dwindled and a calf injury finally forced his retirement while he was at Hull in March 1995. Steve remained in the Hull area, coaching and then ran a pub before successfully passing his LGV driver’s licence. Living in “the edge of the Yorkshire wilds”, Steve was in 2019, driving heavy goods vehicles for the Norfolk-based Dave Watson Transport.  

In 2012 despite describing himself as an overweight, 50-year-old ex-professional footballer with high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol and the occasional bout of gout, he cycled 1400 miles in 21 days to raise money for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, visiting all premiership grounds and the clubs who he played for. He will always be best remembered, however, for scoring Saints last-gasp winner at Fratton Park in the fourth round of the FA Cup in 1984. In 2019 as Saints prepared to face Portsmouth in a League Cup-tie, Moran was interviewed by The Athletic and described what happened.

“If you see the goal, he (Mark Dennis) takes a long throw because he had a bit of a cannon on him. The goal was all wrong. Frank Worthington was all left-footed but he hooked it with his right down the right channel. God knows what Dave Armstrong was doing down there, because he was left-footed, but he crosses the ball with his right foot and I just got over the head of the Portsmouth defender to score. I always thought it was by the penalty spot but now I’ve seen it, I was eight, nine yards out… I’m coming at pace and I’d prefer to take it with my right foot but the way the ball was coming, I had no option to take it with my left foot.

I remember all the hours with Lew Chatterley, one of the coaches at Southampton, practising in the gym on my left foot to try and make me confident to hit it, had obviously worked. I was never one to try and smash the leather off a ball. If I could pass it into the goal, I would do. I was thinking, I’ve just got to get it on target, make a good connection. I got a good side foot. I kept it low but it was a good height for the goalkeeper Alan Knight, but if you watch it, he gets a very good hand on it but that just pushes it into the side-netting (after the goal had crossed the line). And then, it just went mental in the away end (see scrapbook section). 

The rest of the crowd were stunned and were in silence. I still think if we scored any earlier, we’d have caused a pitch invasion it was so volatile but having scored so late, it stunned Pompey. I remember scoring and thinking, ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’ I went to school in Fareham and most of my friends were Pompey — it was about a 75-25 spilt, all the way from school days, there was a massive rivalry, which made the game so much more special for me, as a Saints fan, whose usual spot at the Old Dell was behind the goal on the Milton Road end”.

Moran then revealed how his school football career for Price’s Grammar School in Fareham could have seen him join Portsmouth. “We (my school team) actually won the County Cup. I was a first year but I played for the second year’s team, as winners of the cup, we were invited to train with Portsmouth so they could use it as a scouting trip. I remember going on the train on a Thursday night to go train in a dingy gymnasium with wall bars. The coach at the time was Ray Crawford. He had played for Colchester and scored two goals against Leeds in the cup, which were the big team at the time. Colchester beat them 3-2 (a thrilling FA Cup fifth round upset in 1971) — I half-supported Leeds, so I didn’t like him for that and after about half a dozen times (training in the gym), that was about that”. When he consequently joined Saints, soon after, he reassuringly discovered they had “a much bigger, much nicer gym”.