New strike pair David Healy and Daryl Murphy were in little doubt about what they want from their half-season loan from Sunderland to Town — to play games and to score goals. The duo were paraded at a Portman Road press conference on Thursday afternoon.
Healy says he and Murphy, good friends from their time at the Stadium of Light, can get the goals to lift the Blues from their current lowly position: "We’re both strikers and we love scoring and hopefully between the two of us we can come in and add some goals to the team.”
Neither has played many games for Sunderland in the recent past and Murphy, 26, says his reasons for moving to Portman Road are simple: "I just want to play as many games as I can and score as many goals as I can.”
Both players are pleased to be reunited with their former boss Roy Keane with Murphy feeling it will help them to settle into the hotel-based life of the loan player: "It’s easier when you’ve worked with a manager and a coaching team and have played with a lot of players that are here. It’s much easier for us to come here and blend in.
"We know what the manager’s like, we know what he wants from you, we know how he likes to play, and it was an easy decision in the end.”
Healy added: "Having worked with Roy and played with him at Man United, I think we know each other quite a bit, so he’s taken the chance to bring us down here. We know what makes him tick and, more importantly, what doesn’t make him tick!”
Asked why his domestic record continues to be poorer than his international form for Northern Ireland, Healy says that latterly it’s due to his lack of games: "Because I haven’t played! People always ask why my international record is better than my domestic record.
"When you’re scoring goals internationally, it’s not as if you’re playing week-in, week-out. You score a couple of goals and it’s two goals in two games, but you’ve only played two games in two months.
"Domestically, it’s our bread and butter and the sooner I get back and Murph gets back playing week-in, week-out the better for us both.”
Murphy, who was close to joining the club in the summer and previously when on trial in 2004/05, says his lack of goals is mainly down to the role he has played at Sunderland: "It’s about four years [since he last scored]! It’s hard but the number of games I’ve played as a winger doesn’t help because people look at my record and they think I’ve not scored that many.
"I’ve probably played 70% of my games at Sunderland as a left midfielder, so given a chance to play as a striker I know I can score goals and if I do play as a striker, I will.”
Healy, 30, says it may take a week or so for the duo to hit their peak: "To get match fitness you need to play 60 or 70 minutes and it might - I hope it doesn’t - take us a game or a couple of games to get match sharpness.
"We’re here for three months and hopefully within that time we can impress everybody and show the manager and the board why they brought us here and do as well as we can to push the club up the table.”
Both have played with plenty of members of the Town squad at Sunderland, while Healy has known Gareth McAuley since he was nine and was with Liam Rosenior at Fulham, while Murphy says his presence will strike fear into namesake and fellow Waterford native Brian: "I played with him in Waterford. I used like scoring goals against him. He used to dread it! You ask him about it!”
Healy says there have been no talks about making the moves permanent - his Sunderland deal lasts until the summer of 2011 and Murphy’s a year longer - but if all goes well, the Northern Irishman says it could happen: "We haven’t discussed it but if we do well and the manager’s happy, we’re happy, the board’s happy and, more importantly, the supporters are happy because we’re doing well, we’d never rule out coming to a club of this stature.”