Friday evening match in the RSC kicks off at 7.45pm and will be shown live on LOITV

It was a good result last week when we beat Drogheda United 3-0 to move to the top of the league. Drogheda were defensively stubborn in the first half. Did you need to tweak things at half time or was it just a case of staying patient until we scored?

“I really liked the first half in how we performed. I know we didn’t have the goals to match that and people on the outside might say we weren’t great but I really liked what we were doing. We just needed to stay patient in what we were doing. We knew the openings would come, we knew how we were working them, that the opportunities would come and they did in the second half. So there wasn’t much that we changed for the second half. I said it after the game and having watched it back, I thought it was our most complete ninety minutes performance so far.”

It was two quick fire second half goals to put us in the driving seat with another beauty from Aaron Greene, and a header from Lee Grace from Jack Byrne’s corner. We look really dangerous again at set pieces.

“Yes, we do. I think – and I probably sound like a broken record – it’s so much about our delivery. We always get good delivery, regardless of who’s on the pitch. With Jack, Matt Healy or Dylan Watts, we’ve got good set play deliveries and players who can attack the ball. So we need to make sure we keep that trend going, in terms of our aggression at set plays. We know how important they are in games so it’s great we’ve been scoring and we need to stay focussed on it.”

Josh Honohan this week received an international call-up for the first time for the Ireland games in June against Senegal and Luxembourg. When you signed Josh for the start of the 2024 season, you said you felt he had a “high ceiling” in terms of how far he could develop. It doesn’t get much higher than being called up for your country, so you must be delighted for Josh.

“It’s all credit to Josh and the work he does every day and how he lives his life. I’ve said it from day one, we believe Josh has a really high ceiling, we believe there’s much more to come from Josh. But I’m absolutely delighted as it shows that dedication and hard work and committing yourself to your profession pays off. And hopefully it’s the first of many for Josh and I believe he’s ready to play at that level and I think he will show that. As a club, we should be incredibly proud that another one of our players has been called up for senior international football. But we shouldn’t get comfortable or complacent with that, it’s a massive honour. I’m so happy and proud for Josh and for his family, they’re brilliant people and he’s a brilliant professional.”

But Josh and the group now focus on the trip to Waterford tomorrow. How has training been this week?

“It’s been very good. We have Danny Mandroiu, Dylan Watts and Aaron McEneff who’ve all trained this week and have done really well with no issues. So we’ve only Dan Cleary and Seán Kavanagh out, with Dan hopefully back next week. The group is in a good place, in terms of its health and competition for places, which is what we want. So, as I said, they’re in a good place.”

Waterford, after a disastrous run, have recently reversed that form with four successive wins. So, an in-form Waterford will be a really tough assignment tomorrow.

“It’s an extremely tough game. Waterford are the in-form team in the country at the moment. I said before we played them last time, in Padraig Amond, they have the best domestic forward we’ve played against and he’s a real danger in every aspect. So we know tomorrow is a really difficult game and we know we need to be at our levels and at our best to win the game.”

Waterford recently appointed John Coleman as their manager and his impact has been immediate. Have you crossed paths with John previously?

“I don’t think I have. But he has come in and you can definitely see some of the changes that have been made. I think Conan Noonan (currently on loan from Rovers so will not play tomorrow) has been excellent for Waterford, but you can definitely see John has tweaked things. They’ve won their last four games so it’s definitely a difficult game and we’re under no illusions what we face.