RYAN Murray fancies Antrim’s chances against anyone if (italics) they can reproduce their second half performance against Laois.
The Lamh Dhearg clubman lit up O’Moore Park last Saturday with an uninhibited display of quality finishing that dragged the Saffrons back from eight points down to win by two and book a second round Qualifier against Fermanagh on July 4.
Murray might not have started the game if manager Frank Fitzsimmons hadn’t dropped CJ and Kieran McGourty and Connor Burke for playing a club match the night before the game. But he took his chance when it came.
“A lot of the young boys, myself included, got their chance,” said Murray who scored 1-4 in the game.
“The likes of Paddy McBride, Owen Gallagher, Jack Dowling, Dermot McAleese are all boys I played U21 with and it’s probably the first time we’ve all been on the pitch together.
“There’s a bit of camaraderie between us and we all work hard for each other and don’t give up when the ball is there. We’ve all got each other’s back and it showed there at stages.
“Everyone chipped in with scores and Chris (Kerr) in nets made some great saves. At the end there I thought their attack was going to go on for hours but Laois could have kept the ball for ages and it didn’t look like they were going to break us down. It’s brilliant to get the win.”
Murray admits that there was gloom and doom in the changing room until the penny dropped that Antrim were on the brink and they decided to go down fighting.
“At half-time we were probably thinking what everybody else was thing: ‘Och, we’re seven points down here…’,” he said.
“But we just looked at each other and just said ‘what’s the point in training all year, three night-a-week, four night-a-week to go out and not put in a performance?’
“So we just went out and decided to keep working and it’s probably the first half of football we’ve played all year.
“We just haven’t shown at all but we’ve shown now that it is there – it’s just trying to get it out of us.”
The challenge now is to repeat the dose against a Fermanagh side that beat the Saffrons in an Ulster final at Brewster Park just three weeks’ ago.
“I know it’s a great win but at the same time we’re still not in a great place,” Murray admitted.
“It’s something we can at least build on and reflect back on and say we’ve actually got a win against a team that were complete favourites against us.
“It something we can build on and try and get a run in the Qualifiers because you never know where you can go. If we play like that I’d fancy our chances against anyone but it’s the same thing again, it’s getting that out of us.”
There were smiles and jokes as the Antrim players boarded their bus at the gates of O’Moore Park on Saturday evening. Victory has that effect and a buzz that has been absent will return to the training ground this week.
“After the Fermanagh game it has been quite flat,” said Murray.
“We tried to get ourselves going in training but it just hasn’t been there. Hopefully this will lift us and we’ll realise that what we’re doing in training is working and we can stop another team breaking through us and we can get scores at the other end.
“Since that Fermanagh game everyone has been saying that there’s no-one in Antrim who can score – we’re missing this, we’re missing that…
“But this just shows that when we get going together everyone can chip in and do their job for the county. Hopefully that puts a statement out there to say ‘stop biting everyone who’s actually playing, give the players a chance’.”
