Nottingham Forest’s Daryl Murphy has told the Nottingham Post that he is enjoying every moment with the Republic of Ireland after they qualified for the World Cup play-offs.
The Republic of Ireland have not played in a World Cup since 2002 but now they have a brilliant chance of making it after making it to the play-offs this year. Not many expected them to do it as they needed to beat Wales, a team in hot form after making it to the Euro 2016 semi-finals, but a James McClean goal edged them closer to Russia and made sure that their neighbors over the Irish Sea would not be heading there.
Murphy played in the game and is now savouring the moment after claiming a historic victory at the Cardiff City Stadium. He also heaved praise on his team mates as they were able to battle through and hold onto the lead even when Wales were throwing their everything at them.
He said: “The lads were absolutely fired up for this game.”
“It was a big night for us so we knew we had to keep our heads and just try to play football, and keep calm.”
“And we knew that if we made a chance we had to take it.”
“We play for each other, there are no individuals in this team and it’s what you do for your team-mates – I thought the defence was brilliant, the goalkeeper was magnificent when we were under the cosh. Brilliant.”
“It’s a massive, massive night,”
“They were putting pressure on us towards the end but I thought we defended brilliantly.”
“We didn’t have many chances – but the chance we got, we took, and it’s a massive result.”
“They were good in the first 15 to 20 minutes, they moved well and passed the ball well, they caused us a few problems.”
“But we settled down after that and started to play a bit of football, we created some chances from set-pieces but at the end of the day we knew we had to win and we’ve done that, it doesn’t matter how badly we played.”
“At half-time we talked about things we could improve and looked for more of the same as we had done towards the end of the half.”
