Tickets remain on sale for Bank Holiday Monday’s tie. Kick off in Tallaght Stadium is at 5pm. Coverage on LOITV.

We beat Waterford 1-0 on Friday with a first half Graham Burke goal. Is it fair to say however, given our second half performance, you were quite unhappy with us overall?

“I know we won the game and it’s a results business, we understand all that. But we haven’t done what we’ve done over the years by performing and dropping our levels so drastically in the second half. That’s not us and we need to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”

It’s so seldom you would be quite as unhappy with how we played in that second half. Is it a reminder to everyone that performances don’t just happen, you have to make it happen and that the standards everyone has set for themselves in recent years can’t be allowed to drop?

“Exactly and that’s the key to it. We’ve set these standards ourselves. Again, I understand they’re human and there will be drops, that’s quite normal. There will be moments in games when momentum changes, but Friday was all us in terms of the performance level in the second half. The result is the result, but us as a group, we can’t get lost in that. We know the standards we set for each other, and we must hold each other to them. And we do, but Friday wasn’t it.”

That said, Ed McGinty made sure we kept a clean sheet, his seventh in fourteen games, with two key saves on Friday. 

“Ed was brilliant. You look at Ed, Enda Stevens, Pico Lopes and Lee Grace when he came on, the defence and Ed were excellent. Ed makes two brilliant saves from Padraig Amond. It’s down to them why we left Tallaght on Friday with the win.”

Drogheda United come to Tallaght tomorrow after two successive wins, away at Shelbourne and at home last Friday over Sligo. They remain a very well organised and dangerous team to play against. 

“They do and they will come tomorrow with a game plan and will be ready to try and win the game. They come in on the back of two good wins, we know it will be a tough game. We’re expecting that but we’re very much looking forward to it. 

Pico came off early on Friday. Any update on him and everyone else come through from Friday, ok?

“It’s not too bad for Pico. We’ll assess him today in training to see how he is for tomorrow. We need to look at Cory O’Sullivan in terms of his ankle after he hurt it in Derry recently. Other than Danny Mandroiu and Rory Gaffney, everyone else is ok.”