Last week we came away with a 1-0 victory against DLR Waves. Was that win an important boost for the team heading into this week as we face the league leaders?

“Yeah it was an important boost and also it was more trying to take lessons out of the Sligo game; making sure we had the right tempo, urgency, speed of play and trying to learn the lessons from that Sligo game and bringing it into the DLR game. It was important that we were able to improve on lessons learnt.”

As mentioned, Athlone are currently league leaders, as well as only failing to win three times so far this league campaign. It goes without saying that it will be a challenging game, but also a very exciting one too as the score between the teams was only marginal the last time out.

“It’s a game we’re looking forward to. There’s no pressure on us, I think all of the pressure will be on them. I think I saw somewhere that if Shels and Galway draw then Athlone actually have a chance to go and win the league. They’ve been fantastic this year in fairness to Ciaran (Kilduff) and the team have been really, really good. They’ve played a nice attacking display of football, they’ve scored an awful lot of goals, they have threats coming from absolutely everywhere. I think we spoke about it the last time we played them, they’re one of those sides that you can play against and have all of the ball possession and then you’ll find yourself 1-0 down because they have that quality in wide areas, in attacking areas that can go and hurt you, but it’s a game we’re looking forward to.” 

Athlone have obviously been ruthless this season, but what about their play makes them so clinical and consistent?

“I suppose when you have one of the top goalscorers in the League of Ireland as the manager there’s a lot of experience there that you can go and hand off. But they’ve had good attacking players; Maddie Gibson has brought in a great supply of crosses and they do really well in getting the ball into wide areas and balls into the box. You have players like Maddie Gibson, Roisin Molloy or Isabel Ryan out wide putting crosses in, and then obviously they had Casey Howe for the first part of the season and now Brenda Tabe has pitched in with a load of goals since she’s signed. It’s nice to be able to have that quality of player to be able to go and finish those chances when they come along.”

On the other hand, is there anything in our play that we’ve been improving on throughout the season that we could use to our advantage to help us grab 3 points this weekend?

“Yeah, our confidence has continually grown and grown and with our style of play we’ve made tweaks, but we’ve gone back to our original shape that we had last year and it seems to suit the team and the players and awful lot more. It’s one of those games where we still have bits of quality and we will still look to try and hurt them as best as we can.” 

It promises to be a top quality battle, so do we have a full squad to take into the weekend?

“We don’t, we have Ella Kelly who will be missing because she’s away on international duty. But apart from that it will be a full squad, there’s no injuries within the squad.”