Jon Daly’s Blues welcome Sligo Rovers to the RSC tomorrow evening, for our second home game of the 2026 SSE Airtricity Men’s Premier Division season, and we have everything you need to know ahead of kick-off.
Waterford FC vs Sligo Rovers FC
SSE Airtricity Men’s Premier Division
Friday 20th February 2026
RSC, Waterford
7:45pm
WATERFORD FC
The Blues head into Friday evening’s game looking to pick up their first three points of the season, after falling to a 2-0 defeat away to Drogheda United last Friday evening.
Two goals in the opening 10 minutes of action in Sullivan & Lambe Park gave the home sides all three points, in a game that was moved to live TV coverage on Virgin Media only hours before kick-off after the scheduled coverage of Shelbourne against Shamrock Rovers was postponed due to poor weather in the Irish capital.
After coming from behind to pick up an important point on the opening night of the season a fortnight ago against Shelbourne, the Blues will look to continue that home form tomorrow night against Sligo Rovers.
SLIGO ROVERS FC
The Bit O’Red travel down to the RSC on Friday night looking to bounce back from their disappointing 4-0 defeat at home to Bohemians last Saturday evening. A Colm Whelan hat-trick along with an early Dayle Rooney striker gave Alan Reynold’s side a strong win in the The Showgrounds.
Sligo fell to an agonising 2-1 defeat away to Derry City at the Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium on the opening night of the season. Jad Hakiki had given John Russell’s side an early lead, before two late goals from Alex Bannon & Josh Thomas inside the final ten minutes of action condemned Sligo to an opening night defeat.
With two losses to start of their season, Sligo will look to pick up their first points of the season at the RSC tomorrow night.
WATERFORD FC TEAM NEWS
Jon Daly has no fresh injury concerns to worry about after last week’s trip to Drogheda.
Dean McMenamy returned to the match day squad for the first time this season in Sullivan & Lambe Park, after overcoming an injury that kept him out for the start of pre-season. McMenamy got 60 minutes into his legs in our Munster Senior Cup semi-final against Rockmount on Tuesday night.
Finlay Armstrong remains absent through injury, with Daly hopeful of having Arlo Doherty available for selection for the first time on Friday night.
JON DALY’S THOUGHTS
“Outside of the opening ten minutes in Drogheda, I was relatively pleased with the actual performance. I feel we needed to have a little more creativity in the final third, and just more combination play that we’ve worked on this week again. As the players continue to grow and build relationships between one another, I feel that those relationships will form. I’ve taken positives out of the last 75/80 minutes from last week where we had some really good play, so it was just about fixing that last bit. We were of course disappointed to lose, but it’s now making sure we come back to the RSC looking to make up the points, and that goes for right throughout the course of the season at home.
On Friday, we’ll need to respect Sligo as a different test to Drogheda, but one we feel we can get maximum points from.
It’s two teams that are fairly new, still getting to know each other. They put in a really good performance against Derry [two weeks ago] and were very close to taking the three points there, and they’ll have felt disappointed not to take something from that. Obviously their home game against Bohs last Saturday in different conditions, they’ll probably be disappointed with the performance and how they gave up the goals, so I’d imagine this week they’ll be working really hard on making sure they’re defensively solid so they don’t give up those cheap opportunities again.
Sometimes it’s not ideal facing a side who come into the game having been beat 4-0, so it’s up to us to start fast and put the doubt into their minds, and hopefully we can come away with the three points.”
