The Blues are back on their travels for the second time in as many weeks this Friday, making their longest journey of the season to The Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium to take on Derry City in our latest SSE Airtricity Men’s Premier Division meeting, and we have everything you need to know ahead of kick-off!
Derry City FC vs Waterford FC
SSE Airtricity Men’s Premier Division
Friday 4th July, 2025
The Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium, Derry
7:45pm
WATERFORD FC
The Blues make the journey to Derry on Friday looking to maintain their 100% record over the Candystripes so far in 2025.
Kyle White & Kacper Radkowski netted their first goals for the Blues in our 2-1 win up at The Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium in gameweek 3 of the 2025 season, before Darragh Leahy & Pádraig Amond’s goals gave us our second 2-1 victory over Tiernan Lynch’s side at the end of April at the RSC.
John Coleman’s side will look to return to winning ways, having fell to a narrow 1-0 defeat away from home against Shamrock Rovers FC last week.
The Blues head into Friday’s game with plenty of confidence across the side, sitting in eighth position of the SSE Airtricity Men’s Premier Division with 27 points to our name.
DERRY CITY FC
The Candystripes head into Friday’s game in a rich vein of form, picking up an impressive 10 points from their previous four games – most recently a convincing 3-0 win over Drogheda United last Friday.
Tiernan Lynch’s side sit in second position in the league table ahead of kick-off, with 37 points accumulated so far in 2025 from their 22 domestic games.
TEAM NEWS
The Blues welcome Ronan Mansfield back into the squad, after Ronan’s loan spell at Fleetwood Town concluded at the end of June.
Trae Coyle returned to the action last weekend in Tallaght, having overcome his injury he suffered against Cork City back in April.
John Coleman’s side have no fresh injury concerns from last weekend’s game against Shamrock Rovers going into tomorrow’s clash in Derry.
JOHN COLEMAN’S THOUGHTS
“I’m looking forward to the game on Friday. Derry are on a decent run of form lately. They are probably disappointed with how their season ended last year and they are notorious big spenders so it’ll be a good opportunity to gauge what we’ve got against what they’ve got.
You have the added distraction of a different surface with the astro-turf, so it will be an interesting game and we’ve just got to try and get our focus onto what we’re going to do, and try give the players a clear understanding of their roles & responsibilities.
We’ve watched their games and we know they’re a handful, but we know if we get it right we can be a threat for everybody. And we proved that last week against Shamrock Rovers where there wasn’t much really in the game. They had the lions share of possession but not really hurting us. We’ve got to take confidence from that but just tidy ourselves up a bit.”
Away-end tickets for tomorrow evening’s game in Derry remain on sale. Back the Blues today by purchasing your ticket. Click HERE to secure your seat.
