Give us a hand

[ian1964 10,761]

DARYL MURPHY lived the nerve-shredding tension of needing a final-day favour to win a title.

 

Now he knows he might have to rely on the same stomach-churning outcome all over again.

 

Four years ago the Irish strike star was in the Sunderland side that won the Championship.

 

They went into the last day of the season knowing that everything was out of their hands.

 

After they beat Luton, they learned rivals Birmingham had crashed to Preston and the trophy was theirs.

 

Now Murphy and his Celtic pals are relying on someone else to do them a turn after last night's shock defeat to Inverness.

 

Rangers are a point clear with just three games to go as the SPL season reaches a thrilling climax.

 

Murphy will never concede things are done and dusted and said: "When I was at Sunderland we won the league on the last day of the season at Luton Town.

 

"We needed a favour to do it so I'll never give up hope after that experience.

 

"On that occasion Preston needed to beat Birmingham for us to finish top of the league. They beat Birmingham and we won 5-0 so that was a good memory for me.

 

"It's not impossible. It can easily be done. I've done it, so hopefully I can do it again. That was a tense day and the only downside was that we couldn't celebrate in front of our home fans.

 

"That was a bit of a nightmare but our last game of the season is at home this season - so fingers crossed."

 

Murphy came on as a second half sub for Anthony Stokes but was back off for treatment to a cut eye when Grant Munro smashed Inverness 2-1 in front.

 

It was a shocking display from Neil Lennon's side when they could least afford it.

 

Murphy added: "We are obviously disappointed with the result but we've got three games left to turn it around and hopefully we can win the three games and see what happens from there.

 

"We'd like to think teams can do to Rangers what Inverness did to us but we just have to concentrate on ourselves now and win our next three games, whatever happens will happen.

 

"We started off well enough in the first five or 10 minutes and then we just faded out of the game and they got on top and did well.

 

"We weren't really at the races to be honest.

 

"They didn't surprise us, we knew we were going to get a tough game because any time we've come here we've narrowly won and we knew they were going to be up for the game and give us a good match - and they took the three points.

 

"Of course we are disappointed we didn't win the game or even get a draw out of it, which would have been a good result.

 

"We can't do anything about the fact we've lost the game other than kick on and win our next three.

 

"We knew before this game we had four tough matches to finish the season.

 

"None of them was going to be easy, nobody was going to gift us the game and gift us the title. It will be the same against Kilmarnock on Sunday. They'll be up for it.

 

"I was out warming up at half-time so I didn't hear what the manager had to say but at the end his message was basically that he knew we'd lost the game but we have to think positively and win our remaining games.

 

"I think we let ourselves down with the way we played because we've been playing such good football and to come here and put in a performance like that just wasn't like the lads.

 

"I came on and with nearly the first header I went for I split my eye open but that's part of football - you just get on with it."

 

Charlie Mulgrew's early own goal gave Caley the lead but Kris Commons levelled just seconds later.

 

After Shane Sutherland's volley put Caley 3-1 in front, Commons' injury-time spotkick made for a nervy final few seconds.

 

Celts were rightly denied another penalty when Paddy McCourt tumbled under pressure from Grant Munro.

 

Murphy added: "I was standing right in the box. Paddy ran past people with ease and I just watched him going down.

 

"It looked like one from where I was.

 

"We've got two away games, of course we'd prefer them to be at home but we have to go and win them regardless of whether they're home or away."

 

:tongue:

 

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