The credit has to go to the players
Manager's view - Stevie McBride
We went down and we played with width and pace. Scoring four goals at Windsor Park against Linfield required a great performance by everybody.
The over-riding factor was that nobody outside ourselves gave us any chance of getting something from Saturday’s game.
But, throughout our preparation and in the changing room prior to the game, we all fancied it. We intended to go out and go at Linfield and see what we could get from the game.
That’s exactly what we did. We went at them with pace and they couldn’t cope with it in the first half.
When we gained possession and went at them, Trevor Molloy and Eamon Murray bombed forward, combining with Tony Grant and Gary Liggett to give us a four-man attacking system.
Windsor Park has a big pitch and you can get in behind the opposition defence and go at them with pace and that was our game-plan.
As I said last week, you have to give Linfield respect but you can fear them. You can either go down there expecting to lose the game and give it up or you can go down and give it your best shot. Then, even if you come off having lost the game, you can walk into the changing room knowing that you’ve given it your best shot.
So we just told the players to enjoy it, give everything that they have and have a real go at them.
It was a surprise, certainly. You don’t think that you’re going to go down and score four goals at Windsor, especially in the first half having gone a goal down early on.
But sometimes you get a feel for it and once we got our equaliser, we started to break forward with pace and did everything that we had planned to do.
We seemed very confident and you could see that David Jeffrey was getting a bit irate that they really didn’t know how to cope with us.
Tuda Murphy, I’m sure, will hold his hands up and take responsibility for the first goal but, having said that, he responded very well. He was very assured from then on to the end of the game.
Everybody worked hard, especially on the Windsor Park pitch which is soft and energy-sapping. We said before the game that we had to let the ball do most of the work and I think we did that.
We switched the play very well. Jay Magee hit a few good diagonal balls and we got our wide men behind their defence very well.
But, let’s not get carried away. We’ve got three points and it’s a confidence booster and it’s all about kicking on from here.
What it has shown the players is that they are good and when you’re getting results and performances like that, they grow in confidence within themselves.
When Glenn Ferguson missed the penalty, I thought it was going our way and even though they got a second goal, we could have scored a few more ourselves.
It’s always nice to win any game and especially going to Windsor Park and beating Linfield. To win it in the style that we did was a treat to watch for the supporters, I’m sure.
It was a great feeling when that final whistle blew and it was a thoroughly deserved win. The credit has to go to the players.
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Weather for Lurgan
Thursday 24 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: North
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 18 mph
Wind direction: East
