Report reveals how Ibrox hero Craig Moore opened up Auchenhowie to save Aaron Mooy’s career

A report in the Daily Record has explained how a stint inside Murray Park/Auchenhowie last year saved Aaron Mooy’s career.

After getting out of his contract in Shanghei the midfielder returned to his family home in Bearsden and was attempting to get himself into condition for Australia’s World Cup Play-Offs.

Finishing third in their qualifying group meant that they’d have to face the UAE at the start of June with the winner of that match playing a South American nation for the final place in Qatar.

Mooy was training in a public park, following a programme set out by fitness coach Andrew Clark when some favours were called in.

Across Glasgow Mooy’s former international boss Ange Postecoglou was turning Celtic around but it was his former assistant Craig Moore that used his contacts to open up Murray Park to get Mooy’s fitness to the elite level required for potentially two World Cup Play Offs within 15 days in June.

In the Daily Record, Keith Jackson explains:

Aaron Mooy ran rings around Rangers at Hampden Park on Sunday.

But Celtic’s Viaplay Cup Final hero was contemplating hanging up his boots for good just eight months ago – until a transformational 10-day training stint at the Ibrox club’s Auchenhowie HQ. Having quit his club in China during the pandemic, Mooy was given special access to the facility on the outskirts of Milngavie last summer in order to throw the kitchen sink at one last chance to turn his career around at the World Cup in Qatar.

One month later Mooy had not only booked his country up for a place in the winter finals – but also done enough to convince Ange Postecoglou to sign him for Celtic into the bargain. The blue iron gates of the training ground on the north side of Glasgow were opened up especially for the Aussie and Socceroos fitness guru Andrew Clark after an intervention from ex-Rangers star Craig Moore. Until Moore’s phone call, Mooy had been training alone on a public park near his Bearsden home in a bid to get fit for Australia’s play-off showdown with Peru in Qatar in June.

That story sounds very similar to Craig Gordon almost a decade ago when he trained at Murray Park then joined Celtic as a free agent in June 2014 while Ally McCoist had Cammy Bell as his first choice goalkeeper.

With Mooy training under the watch of Ross Wilson it seems a major slip up that he wasn’t offered a contract while Tom Lawrence and Rabbi Matondo were brought in. Seeing the weaknesses in midfield Micky Beale paid fees for Nicolas Raskin and Todd Cantwell during the January transfer window.