Saturday night’s game in the Showgrounds kicks off at 7.45 pm and will be televised on LOITV. The ticket allocation for away supporters is sold out

We are away to Sligo tomorrow; they’ve had a win, two draws and like us, a narrow defeat to Shelbourne, so they’ve made a solid enough start, where do you think are their main areas of strength or danger against us?

“Sligo have real pace. We know they’re a danger going forward with that pace, Simon Power who we know from being here has electric pace and Mata up front, so they have a real attacking threat. So we have to respect that, respect what Sligo bring to the game, but as always we’ll look to impose ourselves on the game as quickly as possible and take control, that’s our aim in Sligo.”

Last season we began with two draws and a defeat and it’s the same so far this season. You’d probably have got long odds on us having that same start this season, so again there are no givens in football results and teams so often raise their game against the Champions.

“I said before the season that we have no divine right to win any game of football. What happened in the past is done, so it’s about what’s in front of us now. Winning games is extremely difficult, I know this group of players has won a lot in the last five years but we can’t take that for granted, as a team or as a club. Every game we face is difficult, so we must stay focused, keep doing what we do, and keep improving our performances. You look at the game against Shels, we had that 30-minute spell we weren’t good, 15 minutes against Derry, so we need to keep improving on that, and make sure we can get the complete 90-minute performance as soon as possible. Winning isn’t easy, but these players have made it look that way the last few years. If we trust what we do, we’ll be ok.”

Finally, we saw Graham Burke pull up near the end on Monday, is he ok for the weekend and is anyone who was missing last Monday available again for Sligo?

“Graham is fine, he trained all week. Seán Hoare is back and Trevor Clarke is there or thereabouts, so we’re getting there in terms of bodies which is good news.”