"Gaffa" Morling joined Norwich at the age of 11 later captaining the Norwich City associate schoolboy team until the age of 16 when he missed out on an apprenticeship. It was during this period, he first met Kit Carson. On his departure from Norwich, he went onto Scarborough for a year.. He always had the potential to become a good coach and he seriously started working on that side of the game during his late teens and he quickly rose to the top, joining Peterborough after finishing his A levels. Gaffa can proudly boast of being the second youngest coach to earn the full badge, only former Watford boss Graham Taylor was younger when he gained his badge.

John was Kit's right hand man at Peterborough with the Under 16s, he was responsible for planing all of the Academy’s coaching programmes from Under 8 to right up to Under 16 level. He was also managing the Under 18 team that challenges for the FA Youth Cup.

Although John expressed interest in the vacant Peterborough management post that would become available when Barry Fry retired, he instead took up a role with the Republic of Ireland as Head of Player Development.

In 2012, he joined Brighton as Academy Director and took charge of the development squad in July 2013.

He was sacked by Brighton in February 2023 after a complaint was made to the Football Association over an alleged Covid breach relating to the isolation of an academy player who received news of a positive test on the team bus during a match day. Morling spent almost a decade as Brighton’s Academy Manager and was involved in bringing players such as Evan Ferguson, Jayson Molumby and Aaron Connolly - all of whom went onto become senior Ireland internationals - to the club.

The following month he left his role with Ireland having previously managed the Ireland under-15, under-16 and under-17 men’s teams.