After our draw against Cork in the league last week, we turn our attention to the FAI Cup where we kick off our campaign at home to Wexford. What are you expecting from this game?

It’s going to be a really tough game. Wexford had a bit of a slow start to their season but they’ve been on a fantastic run over the last couple of weeks and they’ve had some good results, particularly going to Tolka Park and getting a point, so we’re expecting a real tough battle?

Wexford are on a good run of results at the moment having won 5 of their last 6 league games, so they’ll back themselves this weekend but we’ve also been performing very well recently, so do you think it will be quite an even battle throughout the game?

I do and I think we’ve been on a good run ourselves but it always comes down to converting those chances. If you look at last weekend, we had enough chances to win 3 football games but we still didn’t put the ball in the back of the net and that’s the main thing that always counts. You can have all the possession you want and all the shots on target you want but how many goals you score is the one that really, really counts and that’s the one we’ll be trying to improve this weekend.

Joy Ralph has been on goalscoring form for us lately, scoring 4 in her last 4 league games including the equaliser to get us that point against Cork, and we’ve recently added Emily Corbet to our forward lineup. Are you confident that when they get the chance, they’ll cause problems for Wexford?

I hope so. We’ve been working on bits in training to try and improve that, I think we’ve had a little routine of doing finishing drills every week. It’s starting to pay off but just because we’ve started to score some goals doesn’t mean we have to stop doing that work. We have to work even a little bit harder. I really do think one of these days somebody is going to be on the rough end of a hiding from us with the amount of chances we’re creating and I think it’s only a matter of time before we really push on. 

Like any other team, Wexford can be a dangerous side when they get going. Do they have any areas of their play where they are particularly strong that we’ll be focusing on?

Yeah, they have a great bit of quality in Ellen Molloy. She’s one of those top quality players that in a flash, in a moment, in a quick second she can turn you inside out and stick balls in the top corner or she can thread through balls. She has great vision, great balance, she can play with her back to goal. She’s that extra little bit of quality that we’ll have to be mindful of this weekend.

Ella Kelly received the Player of the Match award last weekend against Cork on her first senior start. Did it surprise you just how much of an impact she had on the game at such a young age and could she play her part again this weekend?

It’s one of those things where you go “no I’m not surprised at the impact she’s had”. She’s been fantastic in training, she’s been fantastic since she’s come into the first team setup. She’s had to bide her time for getting game time on the pitch so she’s had to be a little bit patient in that aspect. We played a friendly against Peamount only two weeks ago and she did extremely well in that game. So no, it’s not surprising and she’s definitely a talent for the future. She’s done really, really well. All those academy players that have made the step up to the first team this year, when you look at Katie (O’Reilly) as well who’s been a regular within the first team, they’ve done really, really well since they’ve come in and we can always say that the future is really, really bright.

We had a full squad last weekend for the first time in a while with Savannah McCarthy returning from injury. Is it the same case again this week or are there any injury worries?

We do have Jaime Thompson, she picked up a knee injury playing with the U19’s on Sunday so she’s expected to be out for about 2-3 weeks. She actually went for a scan on Thursday so we’re just trying to find out the results of that scan but it looks like she might be out for a few weeks. Other than that it’s a full bill of health.