The ticket allocation for away supporters is SOLD OUT. The game will be streamed live on LOITV

Going back to the St Pat’s game, Jack Byrne was very influential in a good attacking display that night and scored a spectacular goal to make it 2-1. Would that have been a fitting winner in the game because of his performance?

“I thought the goal probably summed up Jack’s performance. He was very good on the night and worked extremely hard for the team, and obviously brought his quality with the goal. It was a really high-level strike.”

Pat’s equaliser was also a stunning strike late on and you spoke about small margins going against us. Was that another example of why our first win of the season has been elusive so far?

“It’s a fantastic strike, there’s no doubt about that but when you talk about small margins it’s when it hits the post and goes inside – we’ve had them hit off the post and go outside. When you look at it, there’s not an awful lot that we do wrong leading up to the goal. It’s just one of those that’s a really good strike. He’s hit it well, it’s hit off the post and gone in. We haven’t done anything wrong in that instance, we defended OK so you’ve just got to accept it.”

Was the international break an opportunity to take stock and how did the players get on during their time without a game?

“We’ve had a good two weeks’ training and we’ve had a little recovery in there as well for the players. It gave us a chance to review the first few games, what we did really well and what we need to improve on going forward. So it’s been good for that, it gave us a little breathing space. It’s always nice when you get little breaks to do that but we’re looking forward to getting back into games on Friday against Dundalk.”

Dundalk have been in very good form in the league. What do you make of them this season?

“They’ve been in very good form, had some really good results and they’re sitting in a good position in the league so we know it’s going to be a tough game. It always is in Dundalk. The pitch is a complete leveller in that regard, it makes for a different game. They’ve started well and they’re playing well so it’ll be a difficult game.”

Oriel Park has been a tough fixture for us in recent years, are you hoping that we can pick up where we left off in terms of performance levels before the break and impose ourselves on their patch?

“That’s what we’ll be looking to do, bring our level of performance from the last number of weeks. If we bring that, everything else will follow. I think you could see that against Pat’s the level of performance was really high. If we bring that again against Dundalk the result will look after itself but we’ve just got to make sure to hit our levels on Friday night and look to get all three points.”

Will Pico Lopes be available after playing for Cape Verde?

“We’ll have to assess Pico when he’s back. He obviously played two tough games in difficult conditions and he has a long flight ahead of him, so we’ll need to sit down with Pico and the medical department and make a decision on that one.”

How is Ronan Finn doing in his recovery and how are Markus Poom and Simon Power?

“Ronan has been back training since the middle of last week and the same with Markus and Dylan Watts. Friday will be a bit too early for Simon, we’re probably looking at Monday for him but everyone else is back so it’s been good in that regard, getting everybody back.”