Sunday’s match in Head in the Game Park kicks off at 5pm. Away tickets are sold out. The game will be streamed live on LOITV

Was Thursday a night of frustration because most felt the scoreline wasn’t a fair reflection of the game?

“Yes, because I thought we played well. I said I felt that after the game and when I watched it back, I thought we played really well. We obviously need to take our chances but the officials’ decisions have really hurt us as well. Overall I think we can be really happy with large parts of the performance.”

Did we set the tone for an excellent first half performance early on with Aaron and Richie’s link up play nearly resulting in finding the breakthrough?

“I felt our performance in the first half in general was really good. We pressed really and we were good in and out of possession. The players set a really good tempo and from the first minute to half-time I thought we were very good.”

And you obviously felt that very little seemed to go our way on terms of officiating with Molde’s first goal wrongly allowed to stand and also Aaron’s second half disallowed goal looked only marginally offside?

“I thought they were awful in every aspect and they missed too many big decisions on the night. We know we still concede the second goal from a corner kick and we need to be better in that regard but I just felt they were really poor on the night and got all the big decisions wrong.”

You were just about to make substitutions when Molde made it 2-0 from the set piece so the timing couldn’t have been worse?

“The second goal is really poor from our point of view. We knew before the game where they go on set pieces, we’ve talked about it for the last two weeks so we knew all about it yet they score exactly where we knew they’d go. It was a just moment where we switched off and you can’t switch off for a second or you’ll get punished.”

Alan Mannus did make a couple of brilliant saves so it was an exciting end to end game but one where you must have been disappointed that we ultimately didn’t take one of our chances to reward a good display?

“You have to take your chances at this level, we know that. The games are so tight and you know when they get opportunities, more often than not they take them so there’s no getting away from it. When you’re playing in those games and you have spells that you have, to have to take those chances. We obviously didn’t.”

Have the players been good this season at dusting themselves off and quickly turning their attention to league action again like this?

“The players are in a good place. We’ve always been very good at moving on from a result, win lose or draw, and Thursday will be no different. We were obviously disappointed after the game because we knew we played well but we’ve got to move on very quickly and fully focus on the next game, which is Drogheda tomorrow. That’s something that the players have been really good at doing.”

In what ways have Drogheda usually made it difficult for us on their own pitch in recent times?

“I think the scoreline can you tell you one story but then when you look at the performances it can actually tell you another story. We’ve just got to focus on what we do and bring to the table what we have done the last few weeks, and see where that takes us.”

Who isn’t available for Sunday?

“Other than Simon Power, everyone else is fine. Andy Lyons and Rory Gaffney had a knock but should be OK.”