The remaining allocation of away tickets is on sale now. The match in the RSC will be streamed live on LOITV.

Despite being knocked out of the UEFA Champions League by Sparta Prague on Tuesday by an aggregate 2-6 scoreline, is that deficit a little misleading and unfair given our overall performances in both games against Sparta?

“I think so. People who haven’t looked at the two games will look at the scoreline and think it paints a different picture. I think when you watch the two games, we had incredible chances in both games to give us real momentum in the games, to go ahead in both games and we didn’t take them. I said after the first leg it’s small margins at that level, taking your opportunities, you must be clinical in both boxes. Unfortunately, we weren’t that, but our overall performances in both legs were really good. You know Sparta are going to create chances and score goals, but we’re disappointed at the two goals we gave away at corners. They were poor from our point of view as we’re really strong in that area. But I think the overall score can be misleading. We’ve created a lot of good opportunities and played really well.”

You had stated in your last “Team News” on Monday that we’d need to capitalise on our chances against Sparta. Having equalised with that brilliant goal by Aaron Greene, we had a golden opportunity to go 2-1 up with Neil Farrugia. Would reducing the aggregate to one goal at that stage have led to a closer outcome?

“Definitely, you could feel it in the ground. When Neil went in one-on-one, you could feel the tension in their fans. Also, when it went 2-2 on the night, you could feel it off Sparta’s bench and the crowd. When you’re down there you get a feel for where the game is, so you could feel the tension changing and momentum swinging. But we gave up a really poor third goal too quickly after we scored but you could feel momentum change. It was only the last ten minutes when we’d made a lot of changes, you felt the game was there, and we felt if we scored it was game on. Lee Grace hits the bar and you’re thinking if we score that, it’s a different game again. When you play those big games against big teams, goals change games and momentum. As I said before and I’m repeating myself, you do have to be clinical at that level. You know you’re going to have to work really hard for your opportunities. So, when you get them, you have to take them and unfortunately, over both legs, we weren’t clinical enough.”

Similar to the follow-up game after the Vikingur Reykjavik tie, there’s no time to dwell on Sparta or think about our next European tie against NK Celje from Slovenia as we return to league action after a four-week gap away to Waterford F.C. this weekend.

“What we need to really focus on is that we can’t have a performance like when we played Bohemians after a European tie. We came off the back of the Vikingur game and we looked a million miles away against Bohs. If we go to Waterford like that, there’s no doubt we’ll get beaten. We need to ensure that our mentality, attitude and focus are right. If it is, we’ll be fine, but we need to make sure we’re fully focused on what is in front of us.”

We won 2-1 in Waterford early on this season, then they beat us convincingly 3-1 in Tallaght in May, so a difficult game awaits us and it’s also a big game in terms of trying to gain ground at the top of the league.

“Yes, it’s a big game. With league games now, we’ve put ourselves in a position where we need to take maximum points most weeks. That starts on Friday night in Waterford. But our main goal is to make sure we’re 100% focused. We know we’ve had a good and a tough game on Tuesday in Europe, but that should give us energy, give us focus more than anything else. We need to make sure there’s no repeat of what happened a couple of weeks ago and make sure we’re ready to go.”

While our former player Padraig Amond has attracted plenty of praise for his goalscoring, Waterford are by no means a one-man team.

“They have threats throughout the pitch. Padraig has been brilliant, we know that from when he was at this club, so he’s been excellent this year and a real handful for everyone. But Waterford have threats throughout the pitch and their league position shows that, so we need to make sure we’re on it if we want to go and win.”

Seán Hoare limped off early in Prague and Graham Burke returned to action. How are they and did everyone else emerge ok?

“Graham came through it well with no issues which is great. Aaron McEneff is back, he was passed fit on Sunday before we left for Prague. We’re hoping Seán’s was just an impact injury to his knee, we’ll find out in training but we’re hopeful it’s just a bang. Johnny Kenny remains out also as is still the case with Rory Gaffney.”