Tickets remain on sale for Monday evenings match. Kickoff in Tallaght Stadium is at 8pm. The game will be shown live on LOITV.

Our excellent recent form continued with the 2-0 win over Waterford. Again, it was a really solid and convincing performance all over the pitch.

“Yes, I thought we were excellent. We played with a really good energy and tempo, bar maybe ten minutes in the first half, but I thought we were excellent. We kept a clean sheet and scored two goals and probably should’ve had more, so I was happy with the all-round performance.”

You’d mentioned Waterford’s Padraig Amond as the main Waterford goal threat, but he was very well marshalled all evening by the Rovers defence.

“He was, and we had to give Padraig that level of respect. When you’re against someone with that level of quality and that dangerous, you must give him that level of respect. You could see, right up until the last minute, he’s still making runs, still looking dangerous so you have to respect him till the final whistle. I thought our back three did that really well.”

You’d praised Rory Gaffney for his dedication and hard work to get back fitness this season. Could the same be said about Aaron McEneff who had a similarly frustrating 2024 in terms of injury, and are they like two extra new signings to who we did add to the group?

“Yes, they definitely are. When we got Aaron back from Australia, we knew he had a bad injury. Then when we were getting him back, he just kept getting little niggles. We decided to shut Aaron down to get him ready for this season. Aaron’s been excellent and I think you can see with every game, he’s getting fitter and more comfortable. His goal against Waterford probably summed up his performance in terms of him doing a bit of everything really well and he looks back to himself. So that’s great to see.”

We now play the postponed game against Cork. They have a very young squad, but they gave St Pat’s a tough game last Friday, and in Cathal O’Sullivan have a promising and talented player.

“Yes, they did give St Pat’s a really good game. I’m sure Cork will think they could’ve gone ahead in the game. Then Chris Forrester scores a great goal from nothing. You watch that performance and know Cork were very good. We know tomorrow will be a difficult game, there’s no doubt about that.”

The Cork game will complete our first series of games this season. After a frustrating start results-wise, are you happy with where the group is after a quarter of the league campaign?

“Tomorrow is an important game, and we’re fully focussed on it. Up to this point, I think you can see we’re getting better every week. We know this team gets better as the season goes on and as pitches get better. We’ve always shown that we get better as the season goes, so we’re pleased with the start, but we know there’s so many more levels to come from this team, which is really pleasing.”

How did everyone come out of the Waterford game and is it still just Seán Kavanagh and Seán Robertson on the injury list?

“Both are still out. Everyone else came out from Friday’s game ok. There are a few knocks, Danny Grant got a bad cut on his hand during Friday’s game, but he’s fine so there’s nothing major and all is good.