Stephen Bradley spoke to shamrockrvoers.ie ahead of Friday night’s trip to Weaver’s Park. The match will be available to view on LOITV.

Going back to a big win over Shelbourne in Tallaght a couple of weeks ago, did you feel it was one of our best performances of the season, and was there a lot to be pleased about, particularly two great moves and finishes by Jack and Neil?

Yeah, we were really happy. Like you said, there were a lot of positive aspects of the game. We obviously scored some really good goals and we didn’t concede, a clean sheet is always nice and the players’ performances were really good.

A number of players were firing on all cylinders on the night, like Jack and Neil, and Pico at the back with Leon also making important saves. Hopefully that continues in the league run-in, and of course into Larne and the rest of the European campaign…

That’s the aim, we need to try and maintain our standards that we’ve set over the last number of years and trust what we do. It’s really important that we stay focused and keep working hard, and if we do that everything else will look after itself.

With Derry dropping points twice in the past week, what do you make of the title picture now, as it stands, and is it incredible to compare the points difference from the top to how it was back in June?

Yeah, our focus now is just in front of us, and that’s Drogheda and doing everything we can to go on and win three points. We will look at the points totals at the end of the season, but right now it’s about full focus and concentration on what’s in front of us and what we’re going to have to do to win the game.

Drogheda still have a chance of avoiding the relegation play-off, so they have something to play for at home, on that tight pitch of theirs. Do you expect them to really put it up to Rovers on Friday?

I don’t think you can expect anything different when you go to Drogheda. If you look at their recent games, they’ve been playing well, and we know tomorrow night will be a difficult game and we will respect that. But, we’ve got to make sure that we try and impose ourselves in the game as soon as possible, we’re going there to win three points.

Drogheda gained a 1-1 draw in Tallaght in August but we’d definitely take a repeat of our last trip to Louth, with a 2-0 win and goals by Johnny and Graham…

They fully deserved the draw in Tallaght. We were off it on the day and they were very good, they fully deserved that point. We’ve got to make sure that our performance level tomorrow night is a lot better than it was that day.

Trevor Clarke and Rory Gaffney have been out of action. Do you have an update on them?

Yeah, Trevor’s back training this week and Rory is still out. Sean Hoare and Aaron Greene will be back. If not tomorrow, early next week. So, that will just leave Rory out at the moment. The squad is in a good, healthy position in terms of numbers.

Did Pico Lopes, Markus Poom and Johnny Kenny come through the international break OK and are there any new injury concerns from the last fortnight?

They all had different experiences in their international window, but they all came back fine and are ready to go.