Hot-shot Daryl Murphy ready to step it up for Ireland
As things stand, Robbie Keane. Shane Long and Jon Walters all remain ahead of the Ipswich Town striker in the contest to claim a starting place upfront yet it’s Murphy who has finished this season as the leading Irish scorer in the top two divisions in England, netting 27 goals for the side which fell just short in the promotion play-offs.
“Personally, yeah, it’s been the best season I’ve had and I’m delighted with that,” says the one-time Waterford United man. “I never would have thought I’d get that many goals this season but up around Christmas, when I was scoring a lot and quite regularly, I thought, ‘let’s see how many I can get - aim for 30’. I just came up a bit shy – I’m bigging myself up a bit – but, yeah, I loved it.” It seems reasonable to ask if he thinks he could possibly do any more to catch Martin O’Neill’s eye.
“I don’t think so, no,” he concedes. “But the manager has his own ideas about what he wants to do. I tried all season to just keep doing what I was doing and the gaffer would have seen that but he has his own mind to make up on who is going to play, so we’ll see what happens.
“Am I frustrated? No, because I was delighted to get back in the squad after being out so long. As I said before, getting the call-up gave me that bit more confidence and that’s probably why I got that many goals this season as well.” There was, he’s quick to add, another reason – the coaching input of Mick McCarthy’s assistant Terry Connor, himself a former striker with Leeds, Brighton and Portsmouth among others.
“I have to give a lot of credit to our coach,” says Murphy, “for the sessions he’s been putting on since he came in. If I had him at other clubs I might have scored more goals because he’s the reason that, when I’m getting those chances, I’m taking more shots when I wasn’t last season or seasons before. And they’re coming off for me.
“It shows it can be taught although a lot of players have a natural instinct to be in the right place at the right time. And you can’t teach that, really. Robbie Keane is an unbelievable goalscorer and he’s just always in the right place at the right time to score. I’ve tried that myself in games - to get into positions in the box where I think the ball might drop - and a few times this season it has worked for me.” Murphy’s Ipswich and Ireland colleague David McGoldrick puts it a bit stronger than that.
“Daryl was on fire, he was the Championship player of the year for me, even if they didn’t give it to him,” he says.
Unfortunately, for all Murphy’s pyrotechnics, his goals were not enough to get Ipswich up into the top-flight, a memorable season for the player ending on a day to forget for the club as they lost out to rivals Norwich in the Championship semi-final play-off. Falling at the second-last hurdle after such a prodigious season-long effort was, Murphy concedes, hard to stomach.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t have been good to be around for my missus and kids for a few days afterwards but they understood,” says the 32-year-old. “Listen, it was a massive game for us and the way we lost it was obviously a disappointment but I’ve put it out of my mind now because it’s all about focusing on these games with Ireland.
“The England game is good because it obviously gets us prepared. A lot of the lads were finished at the start of May so it will help get their fitness up. And it’ll be a tough game because of the quality they have in their team.” But the main aim of the next two weeks is to get that vital victory over the Scots.
www.fai.ie/draw.
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