Greg Abbott on the weekend win
United manager Greg Abbott spoke to us about the Peter Murphy Testimonial game and the victory at Walsall just after full time on Sunday afternoon.
He said: “We’re delighted for Peter because it has been a fantastic afternoon.
“The sun was shining, the fans have turned out and the players have come up here to support the event and turn it into a real occasion.
“It was great to be out there and I thought I did quite well! I had to keep Kav [Graham Kavanagh in check and I’m sure he benefited from having me beside him.
“Seriously though it was good to see so many people here to mark the ten years ... more now ... and it was great to see so many familiar faces. The pace of the job means you don’t keep up with people as much as you would like and things like this are fantastic. We’re all pleased for Peter and he will be feeling quite pleased and proud with how it all went.”
“We are all on high anyway because of the way we won at Walsall,” he added. “It’s a game where I thought we played well. We contained them and we were done by a sloppy goal, which disappointed us, but we reacted well and we kept creating our chances. We had to wait a long time to get the winner but we aren’t going to complain because we deserved it.
“We’re delighted for Joe [Garner]. It was a good finish and he’s been waiting for that. He’s here to get his career back on track and to play football and he’ll have enjoyed that. He loves scoring goals and that’s the type of finish we expect from a player of his quality. I thought Kallum [Higginbotham] looked like he had started to settle as well and you could see he was very pleased with his contribution for the goal.
“We made a few changes to the starting line up but we will do that when we feel it’s necessary. The players know that I pick the team which I think will get us a result and they all go with that. Obviously you want them to be upset if they aren’t playing but we are a club who will need everybody as we go through a very busy season.
“I thought it was a great game to watch. It was two teams going for it and we showed a lot of spirit and determination. It’s a difficult place to come and we are very pleased with what we’ve done.
“The celebration at the end shows what it means to win the game. Liam [Noble] is full of energy and he is like the rest of them, he wants to be playing. They’d worked hard as a group and he will be delighted that he was the one to get the goal.
“We have a week of training now and it seems like a while since we haven’t had a midweek game to train for. We’ll use the time to dust off and to get ourselves ready to go again for Saturday.”
