Tickets remain on sale for Friday’s match in Tallaght Stadium. Kickoff is 8pm. Coverage on LOITV.

We made it three wins and a draw in our last four games with the 1-0 win away to Galway United last Friday. Having reviewed the game this week, are you as pleased as you were immediately after the game?

“Yes, I think Galway are really good at what they do, they’ve shown that a number of times this year and last year. The finer detail in what they do is really good, so you have to make sure you’re really on it when you go and play them, and I thought the players were in every aspect. As I said after the game, it wasn’t the prettiest of games, but that’s football and sometimes you just have to find a way to win and the players did that.”

Galway were, as we expected, physical and committed, so how important was it, especially first half, to match up to that, if possible to nullify that and then play our football on what was a testing surface.

“I think you’ve summed that up perfectly there. The game started like that, then in the second half, we settled a lot more and controlled it a lot more. But the second half doesn’t happen unless you do what you do in the first half, and the players did that really well. That was the pleasing aspect, the players were focused. If you don’t respect what Galway do, you get beaten. The players were excellent in every way.”

Having such a strong bench too must’ve been a factor in managing the game after Rory Gaffney’s  goal and were you happy with our game management after we got ahead to make sure we stayed ahead and got the win?

“It’s really pleasing that we have the vast majority of the group available. It makes such a difference to this time last year. It shows, in terms of your team and the substitutions you can make, and it obviously makes you stronger. When make those changes, it doesn’t weaken you in any way and that’s really important. I thought that was the case in Galway. We know as a group we need everybody; everyone needs to contribute if you’re going to be successful and win games. Everyone will play their part at some point, whether it’s starting or coming from the bench. You have to be ready and last Friday they were. And we’ll need that from now until the end of the season.”

A busy April is in front of us, but as always, you’ll take it one challenge at a time. What are you expecting from a Waterford team who gave us four tough games last season, winning one game 3-1 in Tallaght.

“That game Waterford won, they were very good, and we weren’t so good. So again, you have to know, against anyone in this league, if you’re not at your levels, you’ll get beaten. We know that and we’re experienced enough to know that. We’ll give Waterford the respect they deserve, we’ll be ready to go tomorrow night. We know it will be a tough game and with Padraig Amond, domestically last season, he was the best we played against, and he caused everyone problems, us as well. So if you’re not at it, Amond will punish you.”

It will be all hands on deck the next few weeks with the frequency of games in April. Is anyone missing for the Waterford game?

“Seán Kavanagh picked up a knock during the week so he’s out and Seán Robertson took a knock last week when he played for the U20s and he hasn’t recovered from that. So, it’s just those two. Everyone else is available, Danny Mandroiu trained fully with no issue this week, which is really good and Ed McGinty has served his one match suspension.”