VINTAGE BLUES | DARYL MURPHY

Former Blue Daryl Murphy was the Vintage Blues feature in the matchday programme for Town's victory over Sunderland earlier this month.

Vintage Blues focuses on an ex-Town player and their time at the Club, speaking to them about some of their iconic moments at Portman Road.

Daryl, who had three loan spells with the Blues before making a permanent move to Suffolk, also represented the Black Cats during his 20-year playing career.

Read the full feature below.

Ipswich Town against Sunderland, the clash of the two clubs where the Daryl Murphy made perhaps his biggest impact during his career in England. It all started on Wearside…

“I joined Sunderland in 2005 and that was a massive step, coming from playing in the League of Ireland, Waterford United. Mick McCarthy was the manager who signed me, and Mick played a big part in my career, then and later on. I could have come to Ipswich instead though, because in fact, my first week on trial was at Ipswich. That was late in the 2004/05 season and at that time, Sunderland and Ipswich were both going for automatic promotion with Wigan as well. Joe Royle was the manager and he said, ‘Look, we don’t know what division we’ll be in next year, we don’t know what our budget is going to be. I want to sign you, but we can’t commit to it just yet.’

“I told him that was fine, but that I was going to Sunderland for a week on trial straight from there, and I’d have to see what went on up there. Joe was fine with that, wished me all the best and off I went. After a week’s training up at Sunderland, Mick McCarty called me into the office and he said, ‘We want to sign you up.’ That was pretty much it, but it was so funny that I eventually ended up playing for Ipswich as well, which was nice because they’re both great clubs.

“To start out in England by playing at the Stadium of Light was amazing. The fans are so passionate there, the stadium was unbelievable and the fans were filling it every week in the Premier League and even when we went back down to the Championship we were getting crowds of 40,000. My memories are that the stadium was always packed and the atmosphere was brilliant.”

In Daryl’s final season with Sunderland, he spent the last few months on loan at Portman Road, a profitable run of six goals in 18 games.

“I had a great loan spell and at the end of the season, I was supposed to sign with Ipswich. The contract was agreed, we had everything organised from a financial point of view, the contract length, all of that. I went down to sign and found that they’d changed all the details, they’d knocked the wages way down! So basically, I got back in the car with my agent and went home. I was really disappointed, because I wanted to sign. I was happy there during the loan spell, I played well, the Club suited me. In the end, I got the call from Celtic that summer which was a great opportunity, so it turned out well. It was great to go and play there and, in the end, I still got the chance to come back to Ipswich eventually.

“Ipswich is probably the club I enjoyed most of all in my career in England. I always felt welcome there, the fans were great to me, the Club couldn’t do enough for you, everything just seemed to fit perfectly for me. Mick McCarthy came back in and took over and that was great for me, coming full circle really from him signing me from Waterford for Sunderland and then at Ipswich.

“I think Mick just knew my game, he knew what I needed. He knew what made me tick. He was just a great person with the lads. He could put the arm around the shoulder when you needed it or give you a kick up the backside if you needed that as well. He just understood my character. You wanted to play for him and do well for him because he was so good with the players. We had some great times.”

After two full seasons on loan at Portman Road, Daryl signed permanently in the summer of 2013 and embarked on the most prolific spell of his career, initially in a lethal partnership with David McGoldrick.

“We just clicked. Having signed permanently at last, that reassurance that I was at the Club suited me. There was no more of this going out on loan, I was settled, my family were settled, everything was working out well, we had a good manager with a good squad, and it just clicked.

“Mick gave me the number nine jersey that season, and it gives you confidence. You wear that shirt, it’s a big number at any club, but especially somewhere like Ipswich that has had big success and had great goalscorers, and I was thinking, ‘Right, I need to do this justice.’ Me and David McGoldrick, we clicked from day one. What a player he was, and still is. It was a pleasure playing with him and through that season, we were unstoppable, right to the point where he got injured and that eventually cost us the play-offs. That was devastating because he was absolutely on fire that season and it would have been great for him to be able to finish it off, because if we’d both been playing, I think that might have made the difference.

“We felt confident going into the next season. We played Fulham at the start, and they'd just come down from the Premier League. It was a good game for us to start off on. I always liked playing the Premier League teams that came down early on, because I don't think they are ready for the Championship, they're probably thinking, ‘We shouldn't be down here and this is going to be easy.’ But it's anything but easy in the Championship!

“That was a good start for us just to build a bit of momentum, a bit of confidence in the first game of the season, at home, lovely weather, the game on TV, and we kicked on from there. The squad of players was settled, we knew each other, we knew each other's game inside out. Everything just came together that season and although it ended in that disappointment in the play-offs, it was a really enjoyable season and one that I certainly look back on as an amazing experience.”

Daryl won the Championship Golden Boot with 27 goals, the Club’s Player of the Year award, and was in the PFA Team of the Season too in 2014/15, the most successful campaign of his career personally.

“For me, everything went right, and for any striker, when you're in a rich vein of form like that, you're going into games knowing that you're going to score, simple as that. You can just feel it. Confidence is so high, you know you’ll be getting chances and in those runs, everything drops for you. It really does. You're in the right place at the right time, you're getting little tap ins, you're hitting balls from anywhere and everywhere and it’s coming off. You’re catching the ball perfectly every time and you just feel unstoppable. That’s how that season went for me. I didn't care what team we were playing, I just thought, ‘I'm going to score today.’ That was my mentality.

“The Brighton goal summed it up really. I give credit to Terry Connor on that one. TC was brilliant with the strikers because we worked every day on finishing and I remember he used to say, ‘Just hit it as early as you can, because you catch the ‘keeper off guard.’ In that game, Tyrone Mings played it forward and the ball popped up perfectly for me, so I thought, ‘I'm hitting this!’ I think the ‘keeper went to one side, trying to adjust his feet, because he was never expecting me to shoot from there. It was just proving that you should be listening to your coach really! I caught it well, the bounce did me a favour and in it went.

“Coming back the following year after losing in the play-offs wasn’t easy. It’s tough to come back in and start all over again because the Championship is relentless. It's so hard. Even the teams that come up, they will compete really well. Maybe in the Premier League, sometimes you have a bottom three or four cut adrift, but in the Championship, the bottom three are sometimes your hardest games because they're fighting for their lives. You don’t have any time to feel sorry for yourself or you’ll get eaten up, so we just had to come out fighting again, which we did, but we just missed the play-offs again.”

The summer of 2016 was to mark the end of Daryl’s time at Town as he headed back to the north-east once again.

“As much as I loved Ipswich, I couldn’t turn down an offer from Newcastle and to play for Rafa Benitez. I was 33 then, and it was one last crack at trying to win something. I knew they had a great chance to get promoted with the squad they had, so I wanted to be part of that because most players don't win much in their career. Thankfully, I've won two Championships in my career, with Sunderland and Newcastle, and no one can take that away from me.

“Newcastle was just too good a chance to turn down, especially when they offered me a two-year contract at that age. Nobody’s turning that down! I knew going there that I wasn't going to be starting straightaway, but I was experienced by then, I was way more mature and relaxed in how I approached things. So I bided my time, worked hard in training, and fair play to Rafa, he told me at the start I would definitely get a chance. I was always ready for that and when it came, I scored some important goals and got another Championship medal.”

Even after winning Championship titles at Sunderland and Newcastle, it’s still Ipswich Town that has the most special place in Daryl’s heart, a return to watch a game next month with his son very much on the cards.

“I always just felt comfortable at Ipswich, more so than anywhere else. Everyone says it’s a family club and they’re right, but there really is the passion there as well, and you can see that now. After the promotion disappointments we had when I was here, I’m just hoping they get over the line this year, because the fans deserve it. They really do.”

The matchday programme, which is full of features and in-depth interviews, is available to purchase for £3.50 ahead of each first-team fixture at Portman Road.