Kickoff is at Tallaght Stadium at 4pm. Coverage is available on LOITV

Our brilliant performance against Shels on Wednesday has earned us our place in the All-Island Cup Final. It’s a great achievement in only your second year together, and the dressing room must have been buzzing after the game.

Yeah, they were really, really happy. It was a real threshold moment. We came close last year, losing to Shels in the semi-final, so there was a lot of pressure and there were a lot of thoughts over the last year in the back of the mind for everybody, so it was a real defining moment for us on Wednesday just to get over that line. Hopefully, now that will breed confidence into future big games that will be coming up.

The standout highlights of the game were obviously the goals from Joy and Lia, but we also saw Áine hit the post, and at the other end, Amanda was brave to take the ball from the feet of the Shels players right at the end. Does that performance and result show the full potential of the group?

It’s one of those things where, although it was a big game and it was a semi-final and we won it, us and the coaching staff were looking at it, and there’s still so many areas for improvement to be done. I don’t think we’ve reached close to our full potential yet, I think there’s still loads and loads of room there for extra growth, and hopefully that development can keep going between now and the end of the season.

It’s a quick turnaround and next up for us in Cork in the league. We unfortunately lost out 2-1 in Turner’s Cross back in May, but since then we’ve won three league games, so can we hope to add another win to that on Saturday?

Well, that’s the plan. It’s a game down in Cork that didn’t fit well with us, and it’s one where I know that I’m not going to have to say much this weekend, the players are already up for it, they’ve already been mentioning it in the dressing room on Wednesday that it’s nice to win the semi-final, but this is a big game for us. We didn’t perform well down in Cork, and it’s one of those occasions now that we want to go and put right.

If we do manage to beat Cork, we pass them in the league table on goal difference and have a game in hand on them too. Do you feel that the group can really push on now and make our way up that league table?

That’s what we keep on doing, we keep on trying to push boundaries, we keep on trying to get them to do more, and the players have been brilliant. They’ve taken everything on board so far, and although results wise it hasn’t been well at the start of the year, we’re beginning to hit a little bit of momentum now, and we’re hoping to keep that momentum going.

Cork have won their last two matches against tough opponents in Peamount and Bohs. Their confidence will be high going into this one, so what do we have to do to shut them down?

It’s a big improvement in Cork this year in comparison to Cork last year. They’ve had some great additions to the side. I think one of our former players, Orlaith O’Mahony, has a little extra calmness and an extra bit of dynamic to them in the middle, and Colleen Kennedy up top has added an extra bit of pace and tenacity. There are some good players in that side now, but we’re at home, it’s our home patch. Tallaght Stadium is where we want to be playing week in, week out, and it’s an opportunity for us to go and play our football in the best stadium in the country.

Aoife, Lia and Joy have played a lot of football recently. Are they still good to play this weekend, and did the rest of the squad pull through from Wednesday?

Yeah, the full squad has pulled through, and it’s nice to say, for the first time this year, that Sav (McCarthy) comes into the matchday squad. She’s worked extremely hard over the last few months to get back to this opportunity, so it’ll be nice to have her back in the squad for this weekend. Lia, Aoife, and Joy are still fresh. We try to mind them; they want to play every minute of every game, so we do our best to try and mind them, but their energy was good on Wednesday; they didn’t look tired, so we’ll just have to assess it during training and see which way they’re at. It’s basically a full squad to pick from, with Emily Corbett coming in for her first league game of the season.