Sunday evening’s match at Tallaght Stadium kicks off at 7pm. Tickets available here. The match will be streamed live on LOITV.

We suffered a 1-0 first leg defeat away to NK Celje in the UEFA Europa League 3rd qualifying round. It’s a defeat, but not the worst result in the grand scheme of things.

“We’re obviously disappointed to lose the game. I felt we had enough chances to at least come away with a draw, but we’re really disappointed with the goal that we gave away. I know they had other opportunities and Leon Pohls made two great saves, but in terms of the goal we gave away, it was really poor. But the tie is alive, and we take it back to Tallaght with everything to play for.”

You mentioned after the game when you saw their pitch your game plan was changed. Was that in terms of the team shape and match tactics or team selection or both?

It was a bit of everything. You see the pitch and I know I said it already, I was genuinely shocked. It was dangerous. To be fair, I think UEFA were trying to change the venue, but they couldn’t. But it was genuinely the worst pitch I’ve ever seen. There was no point in trying to play on that the way we normally play. You look at players on the bench like Jack Byrne, he’d be wasted on that pitch, and you’d even have second thoughts bringing Graham Burke on. So, it changed everything last minute, which was unfortunate. But we dealt with it well to be fair, you could see it wasn’t our usual game, but we dealt with it and got on with it.”

Finally, on the Celje game, while we looked comfortable enough, Leon Pohls made some vital saves at key moments.

“In the first half he made two good saves. I thought we were just okay in the first half and Leon had to keep us in the game with those two saves. Then second half, although we had chances in the first half, I thought we were very good and deserved to get something out of the game. In the second half, we were really comfortable.”

In our previous European ties, we’ve had away domestic games to face immediately after, so will our familiar home surroundings help our preparations for Sunday’s Drogheda game?

“Yes, it’s nice to be home tomorrow. We only got home from Slovenia early on Friday morning so it’s nice not to have an away journey tomorrow. The players will recover and get ready for Drogheda. We always say we’ll focus on the next game. Drogheda is the biggest one as it’s the next one, so that’s our focus now and getting three points. That’s all we’ll be thinking of.”

Drogheda have been making some progress recently in their fight for survival in the Premier Division so they will be stern opponents for us. Where do you see their threats to us?

“Their two lads up top are very good. I went to watch them two weeks ago against Waterford and the two lads caused them real problems, they’re a real handful. Then they’ve the likes of Ryan Brennan and Darragh Markey behind them. Drogheda are very dangerous off set plays, so we know where they’re strong, but we also know where we can hurt them. It’s up to us to take our form from Thursday night into tomorrow as we did last week against Waterford.”

Did everyone emerge ok from the Celje game, particularly from what looked a potentially dangerous pitch? What’s the latest on Johnny Kenny and will new signing Marc McNulty be involved against Drogheda?

Everyone came out of the game ok, just a few knocks but nothing major. Johnny is doing well, his symptoms feel good and he wants to play. But his scans are telling us we need to be cautious because of the type it is and the area it is. It can be a matter of couple of weeks or a few months. We need to be careful as Darragh Burns had something similar, and we tried to go too early with Darragh and that ended up being a longer one. So, I don’t think Johnny will make the second leg against Celje but he’s getting there. We just didn’t get Marc’s medical scans in time for Celje away, he needed his ECGs and everything all cleared but our doctor and physio didn’t get them back in time. But he’s clear for tomorrow, so Marc will be involved against Drogheda.”