Chris O'Grady
Image by: Paul Hazlewood
PUBLISHED
07:00 7th February 2015
by James Hilsum
That's a lesson that if you persevere with a situation, it will eventually come good if you deserve it."
Chris O'Grady
Chris O'Grady
Brighton & Hove Albion striker Chris O’Grady says that sheer hard work and determination are the main reasons behind his dramatic rise to prominence during recent weeks.
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The 29-year-old experienced a tough first half of the season at the club since his move from Barnsley last summer, but has now firmly staked his claim for a regular starting berth and is targeting a long-term future on the south coast.
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He said, “My family are here and we are settled. The kids are in school and happy, so it's definitely the target and the goal.
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"I've succeeded at all the clubs I've been at in the past five years which has led me to be here.
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"I started in League Two and if you do fail at any club at any time then you are only going to go down. Failure is not really an option. You have to work as hard as possible to succeed.
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"Even though the first half of the season didn't go well, it would have been too easy to give up and just write it off as 'this one didn't really work out'.
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"That's a lesson that if you persevere with a situation, it will eventually come good if you deserve it."
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O’Grady says his aim for the rest of the campaign is to simply help Albion rise up the Championship table and despite the team’s precarious position, he draws few parallels with the relegation battle which he experienced with Barnsley last season.
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“I just want to continue contributing; I came back [from Sheffield United] when the team were in quite a low position and I wanted to contribute and help then get out of that position, whether I’d be starting or just involved in any way.
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“Consistency is the key really and we need to go on a run and just stay on it, because you can pick up a couple of wins and then get the odd defeat, then you do get sucked back in to it.
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“It’s definitely about grinding draws out when it looks like you might be beaten and then turning draws into wins.
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"At Barnsley we were chasing from day one. We were bottom of the league after the first game. We lost 4-0 at home to Wigan and from that point we were in the bottom three the whole season and chasing to get out of it.
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"It's definitely different in that way. Brighton are a much bigger club in terms of the resources and the quality of the squad. Hopefully there's no comparison and this is a temporary situation which we can steer away from as soon as possible and get to where we need to be in the league, which is in a much higher position.”[h=3]ALBION V NOTTINGHAM FOREST
[/h]SATURDAY 7Th FEBRUARY, KICK-OFF 3PM
[h=3]ALBION V BIRMINGHAM
[/h]SATURDAY 21ST FEBRUARY, KICK-OFF 3PM
[h=3]ALBION V LEEDS
[/h]TUESDAY 24TH FEBRUARY, KICK-OFF 7:45PM
Original article