Match tickets remain on sale. Kick off in Tallaght Stadium is at 8pm. The match will be streamed live on LOITV

We suffered only our second defeat of the season last Friday, losing 1-0 to Derry. It’s a game best and hopefully soon forgotten.

“I know we’ve lost the game and we have to try and understand the game and what happened, but what I felt after the game and even before it, in terms of what it was going to be, it was what it was. It’s not one you dwell on, or over-analyse.”

As often happens, small margins can make a difference. John O’Sullivan’s wonderful volley off the crossbar deserved to give us the lead but not long after, we conceded a scruffy only goal of the game, so they were two key moments.

“Yes, and Aaron Greene had an early chance as well, over his shoulder that he should score. So just those moments, which we knew it probably come down to, when you look at the pitch and what it was, the type of game it was going to be. We should do better on the second phase of the corner (for Derry’s goal) and we kept him onside, then they got the bounce of the ball and scored and that’s it.”

We come to another Friday/Monday match week, beginning with Waterford at home. It’s nice to have a home game to follow up an away defeat.

“We’re looking forward to playing back at home. Both this week’s games are at home and we need to make sure we’re ready for Waterford tomorrow. We’ve seen so many times, every game in this league is difficult and tough. We expect tomorrow will be no different.”

Waterford have found points difficult to come by so far, but we drew with them 1–1 recently in Waterford so they have enough players who can hurt us tomorrow and a team fighting for points is always a tough proposition.

“Waterford have good players in their team and good attacking players. We saw in that game in Waterford, we were in control for the majority of the game but then they went 1-0 up and we know that’s a danger with them. So we have to respect that.”

We saw Danny Mandroiu last week during a club video doing some running around the pitch. That must be a huge boost for everyone, but especially Danny himself after that horribly unfortunate injury in last year’s FAI Cup final.

“Danny is doing really well. You can see he has put on a bit in terms of size, which will help him when he comes back. He’s been working extremely hard and it’s great to see him back on the pitch and we can see the progress he’s making. Hopefully and all going well, we’re not looking at it being too long until Danny is back with the team so he’s doing really well.”

Other than Danny, how is Matt Healy and how is Rory Gaffney progressing and anyone else unavailable?

“Matt is fine, he trained all week and things seem to have settled down. He had a few scans and X-rays done to make sure there were no cracks in his ribs. But he’s good. Rory is finishing a strong course of antibiotics this week which will allow us to get him going again, so that’s the plan with Rory. All the players who came back last week have had another week under their belt and everyone else is fine.”