Saturday afternoon’s match in Tallaght Stadium kicks off at 5.30 pm. Tickets are available online and at the gate.

Our first away win since opening day in Sligo, was Athlone a good, hard-earned victory on the road?

“It was. It was a really tough game. Athlone in fairness to them are a very good side and didn’t make it easy for us. It’s a difficult place to go so we’re really happy with that win.”

Lia O’Leary scores a great individual goal on her left foot, was that fitting to win any game?

“Yeah, and Lia did an awful lot of work on the day. We kind of changed the shape to try and deal with Athlone’s threats and then look at ways that we could hurt them a bit more than by playing our normal way. One of those ways was to play Lia a little bit higher as more of a wing-back and it’s nice that something we worked on came off. But it’s a great run, great finish and she’s been in top form so far this year.”

Did we deal well with the first half pressure from Athlone and grow into the game after the goal?

“It seems to be a theme of a lot of the games as the season has gone by, where teams try and have a good go at us and thankfully, so far we’ve been able to withstand the pressure that they throw at us in the first half. Then our extra fitness levels get us through the second half. That’s when teams go up through the gears and have that extra level to go to, and that’s where we’re finishing off most teams.”

The defence stood strong at the end for a fourth straight clean sheet for Amanda Budden. Is that a foundation you always want to build on?

“Absolutely. I think clean sheets are what always win league titles, so it’s vital that we keep that clean sheet run going.”

DLR Waves are down in eighth place after losing their last three games. What sort of team are they?

“They’re going to be a very well organised and very hard to break down team. In fairness to Graham [Kelly] he has them very well organised and they’ve been unlucky in a lot of their games, where it’s just been individual mistakes that’s cost them. Their performance has been decent the majority of times, so for us to try and get anything out of it on Saturday, we’re going to have to play up through up the gears early on. Our tempo and the quickness of our play is what can break them down because they’re well organised, they know how to fill gaps and they’ll make it extremely difficult for us.”

Which of their players could be dangerous in Tallaght?

“Thankfully one of their top players Joy Ralph, I think is going to miss out due to injury. But when you have Eve Bandana in goals and Jess Gleeson sitting in front of her, there’s that mainstay of experience that they have. Then you have Katie Malone up top so they do still have a good spine through it.”

Rovers still have a 100% home record so hopefully another good crowd can help the team maintain that on Saturday?

“The crowd has really helped in all the games that we’ve played because of the buzz and the atmosphere and I know that the players feed off it. We feel that it has been growing over the last couple of weeks and hopefully that will continue on Saturday because it really does help the team out.”

Shauna Fox was forced off with an injury in Athlone. Will she miss Saturday and are there any more doubts?

“Yes, it looks like she will miss Saturday and a few weeks after that due to a thigh strain. Jaime Thompson is one that we’ll have to assess as well because she came off with a knee injury. She hasn’t trained this week but we’ll see how she is in training tonight. The other one is Stephanie Zambra, who unfortunately had another recurrence of the hamstring injury, just when she was in training and on her way to returning to playing. It looks like she’ll be out for another few weeks again.”