Thursday evenings game in Ghent kicks off at 5.45pm Irish Time. TV Coverage on Virgin Media 3 and BT Sport 4
A 5 star performance against Finn Harps on Sunday. You must have been really pleased with it?
I was delighted. It was an important game. We knew we had to perform and win, the players did both and we were all delighted with that.
A brace for Neil Farrugia, he and his teammates looked delighted with that and it came from two good moves as well…
Neil has been very good, he’s worked extremely hard to get himself back to that level, and that was down to him. You could see from the reaction of the group how delighted everyone was for him.
Jack Byrne won the man of the match award. Did his goal in the second half to make it 5-1 cap off an impressive display from him?
It was great to get Jack 90 minutes on the pitch. We’ve seen glimpses that he’s getting back to himself, we’ve been building to getting him 90 minutes, so getting a full game on Sunday was great. The goal capped off a good performance from him.
What do we know about Gent – their style, strengths as a team and best players?
They are a very good side, they have played at a really high level in European competitions over the last few years. We know it’s a tough game, they all are at this level, and this is no different. I believe that if we are at our levels and focused that we can hurt them.
Has anyone not travelled?
Everyone has travelled. Richie and Pico are not too far away, Sean will be a little longer.
Did the Djurgardens game last week show that we can perform at this level and will it give us confidence tomorrow against another quality European side?
We’ve no doubt that we can perform at this level. We’ve shown that on a number of occasions. We have to bring that level of performance with us tonight because we know that if you don’t perform, or are a little bit off, you can end up in a bit of trouble, so we have to make sure that we are right at our levels.
We’ve had two tough away defeats in Europe this season. Does the group learn as much from those losses as they do the wins and bring that into big nights like this?
We learn from every experience, every game, but especially these tough games in Europe. This is our ninth European game of the year, so there has been lots of learning and experience that we will take into the match.
It’s a bit of a landmark on Thursday, as this is actually Rovers’ 100th game in European competition. The club has a great history in Europe. So hopefully with a thousand fans behind us we can make a little more history?
That’s the aim. We know that we will have fantastic support tonight. It’s incredible to have these numbers away from home. Hopefully, we will give them a performance that they can be proud of.
