Michael Duffy thrilled to be back on the pitch after Oriel Park return

Michael Duffy admitted it was great to be back on the pitch after returning in today’s dramatic 2-2 draw between Derry City and Dundalk at Oriel Park.

The forward had to sit the first 9 weeks of the season out after picking up a calf injury during the warm-up ahead of the first game of the season at St. Patrick’s Athletic, but he finally made his return, replacing Ciaran Coll in the closing stages of yesterday’s game.

“It feels great,” he said. “It’s good to get back onto the pitch. It has been a frustrating start to the season for myself. Hopefully I’m past that now. It was good to get some minutes, and hopefully I can get some training under my belt now as well.”

Reflecting on that moment at St. Pat’s, Duffy admitted the injury came out of nowhere after a strong pre-season.

“I felt great in pre-season,” he explained. “I got through pre-season well. That was important for me because obviously last year was frustrating. I had a lot of niggles, I just needed to get through pre-season and I did, and then, it was just typical. I went to sprint in my warm up and my calf just went. I haven’t experienced anything like that before in my career. It was a bit of a mad one, but that’s just football for you, and I’m just glad to be out the other end of it now.

“It was a hard one to get my head around at the start because I just had it in my head to get through pre-season and make sure my body was right. I felt great, but it was a big setback and it was tough to watch the games. The lads have been brilliant; I know the last couple of games we have dropped off a bit but we’re going to start picking it up gain now and that was a good sign today.”

While Derry City did fight back to claim a point yesterday, it is now just one win in the last six league games and Duffy admitted the players were disappointed.  

“We see it as two points dropped because we want to win every game,” he acknowledged. “Obviously we made a silly mistake and they went 2-1 up in the space of a minute, but we dug in and it was an unbelievable header from big Cian. We just have to look at it that way, because it’s a hard place to come and it always has been so it’s a good point at the end of the day.”

Duffy enjoyed some of the biggest moments of his football career at Oriel Park while playing for Dundalk, and despite the circumstances, he fully expected the home side to make a fight of it in the second half, having seen the never-say-die attitude at the club on countless occasions before.

“Dundalk are always like that at home,” he stated. “They don’t give up, they just stick at it, but we just had a two-minute spell where our concentration went a bit, but we dug back in and we got the point. It is disappointing because the game was in our hands especially after Ben scored, but we’ll still take the positives from it. At the end of the day, you don’t want to lose three games in a row, so we’ll take the positives from it and we’ll take the point. It will be a tough game down in Cork but we’ll go into it needing the win.”

Character

Meanwhile, Ruaidhri Higgins praised his team’s character for fighting back in difficult circumstances to claim a point after a fascinating battle at Oriel Park.

“For the majority of the game we were the team n control and their two goals came completely out of the blue,” he said. “Before their first goal they didn’t have a chance in the game, and then we gift them their second goal and left ourselves with a bit of an uphill task. But as this group always does, they showed great character and Cian Kavanagh scored a world class header. It was out of the top drawer that header.”