Thursday evening’s UEFA Europe League Playoff First Leg kicks off at 18.30 Irish Time. A live stream is available to purchase on LOITV

What are your reflections almost a week on from the wonderful achievement of making group stage European football by beating NK Celje 3-1 after extra time, 3-2 on aggregate?

“It’s obviously a really historic night for the club and the team. It’s the first time qualifying for group stage football in Tallaght in front of our own fans and the second time in three years. It was a special night. I thought the players were brilliant on the night and fully deserved to win so it was a special night all round.”

Our two quick-fire goals around the half hour mark really had Celje on the rack and the move that almost led to Trevor Clarke making it three was a move of the highest quality, we finished the first half brilliantly.

“Yes we did. But I think that’s our experience as a team, when you get your moments in Europe, you really have to capitalise on them. We didn’t manage to do that against Sparta Prague but we did against Celje. You could see there were times when we controlled the game, we caused them real problems. If Trevor had scored that third goal before half-time, I think the game was over at that stage. The game would’ve been killed competitively. But it wasn’t to be, we don’t make things easy for ourselves! But when we had our moments, I thought the players were really good.”

Predictably, Celje upped their game second half but every player involved threw their body on the line, showed incredible bravery and Graham Burke’s early extra time goal seemed to inject even more energy into a tiring group.

“I think both teams were tiring. Celje had nothing to lose, they had to come out and try and force the game and as a result take chances. But I didn’t think they caused us too many issues. Leon Pohls made one really good save, but other than that I thought we defended really well. So once Graham scored in extra time, the belief and energy grew and also in the ground. The fans were brilliant in giving us that energy to which the players feed off. So we defended really well in the game, I don’t think we gave up too much in the game on the whole.”

But we must now quickly move on again as PAOK loom large for our Europa League play-off first leg away on Thursday. It’s still your intention to see off PAOK and make the Europa League group stage.

“Yes that’s definitely our intention and our aim, to try and win this tie and make the Europa League group stage. It remains to be seen can we achieve that. But it is nice going into the game knowing that we’ve secured group stage football, but our aim will be to try and win the tie against PAOK and qualify for the Europa League. We know it will be a tough game, but that’s definitely our aim.”

You’ve seen PAOK play. They’re an established European football force. What is their game set-up from what you’ve been able to see of them?

“As a staff we’ve all watched them. There are one or two players we’ve come up against in the past, but we can see they have good players. When you’re at this level in Europe, that’s what you come up against. We know they’re a good team with good individuals, but we need to focus on us, go into the game with our game plan and take it back to Tallaght and hopefully win the tie.”

Aaron Greene took a real battering for the penalty against Celje. Is he ok and did everyone come through that game and what’s the update on Johnny Kenny and Rory Gaffney?

“Aaron did take a bad knock on the penalty incident, to be fair he got through the game which was incredible. He’s come through it ok now and feels alright. We have a few knocks, Pico Lopes picked up a knock so we’ll check on Pico the next few days. Johnny is doing really well, I imagine he’ll be back next week. We’re waiting on some news with Rory to see where he is with his injury but everyone else is ok.”