Murphy on a mission to right the wrongs of 2013

All-Ireland winning Donegal captain Michael Murphy has admitted he couldn’t blame anyone who wrote off the Ulster outfit as one season wonders.

The 2012 Sam Maguire Cup winners are happiest of all to be working off a clean slate after a wretched year that saw them tamely relinquish their All-Ireland and provincial crowns.

They also suffered Allianz League relegation and will compete in Division 2 next month. Murphy insisted he’s not paying any attention to critics of the team, though accepted some will feel their All-Ireland win was a one off.

“Ah, it’s probably a fair enough assumption on the back of last year,” said Murphy. “But I suppose last year was only one year, you have to look at that too. We didn’t become a bad team overnight.

“People tend to write you off and that’s the way it happens but it’s not going to be used as any sort of motivation. We know ourselves what we have to do, we know the journey we want to go on and it’s just about executing every stage of that journey, through McKenna Cup, through league, through championship.

“That’s the best way I can put it, that we know where we want to go and it’s about trying to get there.

“People will say we have the motivation of trying to overcome the critics from outside. But we got praise from them a couple of years ago and we got criticism about our style of play in 2011, it never worried us either way.

“This year, I suppose it’s more questioning of where we’re at and what’s going to happen. But it doesn’t really bother us too much.”

Donegal stumbled in Sunday’s McKenna Cup opener, scoring just two second half-points against Tyrone and losing by three. Of more significance than the result was manager Jim McGuinness’ decision to field eight of the players that started the 2012 All-Ireland decider.

It indicated a desire to hit the ground running early this season having struggled with a second string in last year’s competition in the build up to their league troubles.

“I think we are focusing on a better start to this year,” continued Murphy. “The last couple of years with the McKenna Cup and the league, our hands were kind of tied in a way too because we weren’t really able to put out our strongest players due to injuries and maybe players resting up after long seasons previously.

“The break we’ve all had since last year’s championship has given players an opportunity to get back into training and to get into shape and as a result now hopefully we’ll have those players for the remainder of the McKenna Cup and moving into the league.

“Hopefully we can hit the ground running a wee bit. We’re in Division 2 of the National League but we’re looking around at all the teams and it’s going to be very competitive. Hopefully that will stand to us going into the championship. We’re hopeful that with everything clearing up, we’ll have the numbers to really compete.”

Murphy experienced the new black card rule in the Tyrone tie but, like manager McGuinness, was unable to come to any definitive decision about it. He said it was strange to hear an excitable crowd talking noisily after each heavy challenge, wondering if it would warrant a dismissal.

“It’s hard to know when everyone will really be used to it. You are probably talking the championship, the back end of the league at least, when everyone has got around five or six games under their belt.

“The experiences we’ve had so far, the first game in the McKenna Cup, a friendly we played, there hasn’t been too many dished out and there was a lot of common sense used.”

* Murphy was speaking at the launch of the Aviva Health Schools Fitness Challenge 2014, a challenge to measure the aerobic fitness of first, second and third year secondary school children. Registration closes January 17. See www.avivahealth.ie/fitnesschallenge for details.