Michael Murphy playing with children at Glenswilly this week – Pic Geraldine Diver
DONEGAL captain Michael Murphy has rounded on critics of his team and insisted he and his players are ready for battle with Laois this Saturday (5pm Carrick on Shannon).
The Glenswilly man also dismissed reports in the national media that the players were tired from over-training.
“When you get beat people make up things and says you didn’t do this or you didn’t do that,” said Murphy.
“We trained hard. Any time we come we train hard, we train collectively and we train good. We have gone through everything preparation wise, the exact same way we prepared for every other game.
“We didn’t perform. Monaghan performed and won an Ulster Championship. Champions, deal with it, move on and let’s get on the bandwagon, let’s get at it again and put the best foot forward for Donegal.
“People maybe put two and two together, fair assumption fair enough point, but, nah, everything, the legs felt good, mentally we felt we were in a good place, we just didn’t perform.
“Monaghan performed in all the facets and I’m going around in circles, but I’ll say it again, they out-defended us and the out-attacked us and we are going to have to out-defend Laois and out-attack Laois and try to score more than them and concede less. That’s it.”
Murphy said he and the team met with Jim McGuinness and coach Rory Gallagher on Monday to discuss Sunday’s defeat.
“There was a collective positivity. Everybody was there. Everybody was down naturally from the game,” said Michael.
“But, everybody was still positive to put it right. We will train the way we always train, the way we always prepare.
“Laois will be a huge game. They are coming off the back of a number of wins, good wins at that, and they will be fairly positive from people will maybe look at it as a different mindset.
“It will be a tough game. Every qualifier is a tough game. It’s do or die now.
“I think any team that gets beaten in a game is mad to go out the next day to try to redeem themselves. If you get beat, you want to try to put it right.
“We’re going to prepare the exact same way we did before the Monaghan game, the Tyrone game and the Down game. We’ll prepare for it well, travel well.
“We’ll try to get the result and get ready for the next game. We’ve been in the position many times where we’ve got beat and that’s where we are now. We’ll try to put it right.”