Jon Daly’s Blues make their longest journey of the season to the Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium this Friday night to take on Derry City FC in our latest game of our 2026 campaign, 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 27th February 2026
The Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium, Derry
7:45pm
WATERFORD FC
After picking up a point at home to Sligo Rovers at the RSC last Friday, the Blues make the journey to Derry this Friday looking to pick up their first win of the new campaign.
This Friday’s game arrives exactly one-year on since the Blues defeated Derry 2-1 at the Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium last February, with goals from Kyle White & Kacper Radkowski giving us our first win away in Derry since 2021.
Waterford have drawn both home games this year to-date, against Shelbourne (1-1) on the opening night of the season & Sligo Rovers (0-0) last weekend, as they look to defeat Derry for the second successive year away from home.
Jon Daly’s men sit in seventh position in the league table after three games played going into Friday nights fixture.
Derry City FC
Tiernan Lynch’s side welcome to the Blues to Derry in what is their fourth consecutive home league game of the season, after having their game week two fixture against Dundalk reversed as Dundalk’s off-season work on their pitch in Oriel Park continued.
Derry started off the season in dramatic fashion, scoring twice in the final ten minutes on the opening night of the season against Sligo Rovers to start the year with 3 points. Seven days later, it took a 98th minute penalty from Michael Duffy to salvage a point at home to newly-promoted Dundalk in an entertaining 2-2 draw.
Last Friday night saw Derry stumble to their first defeat of the season against Bohemians, as Dawson Devoy’s 65th minute free-kick proved to be the difference between the sides, as Derry sit in fourth position in the Premier Division table going into Friday night’s game with four points to their name.
WATERFORD FC TEAM NEWS
The Blues have no fresh injury concerns to contend with going into Friday’s trip to Derry. Finlay Armstrong continues his recovery, as does Arlo Doherty who suffered a hamstring injury ahead of the start of the season.
Jon Daly has confirmed that it will take a few weeks for new signings Jordan Houston & Will Johnson to get up to match sharpness, with Jordan joining having not played since October & Will currently recovering from injury of his own.
JON DALY’S THOUGHTS
“We’re looking forward to going away from home again, trying to get three points at a difficult venue. It’s a long journey for us. We have to be prepared & be ready. We’ve done our work on the pitch & the analysis [of Derry], so we’re prepared for what lies ahead.
Derry are a team that brought in a lot of new faces and they’re trying to find their way. The quality they have in their building – they’ve just added Barry Cotter to their side this week. We were only talking ourselves earlier in the week, who do they drop out of the side because they’ve to drop a player that could potentially play in most other teams in the league. The depth & strength they have within their squad is quite envious, but we’re obviously looking at ourselves and looking at how we can hurt them. Michael Duffy, we’re well aware of the threat he poses, and for us it’s about managing him and concentrating on them for the full ninety minutes.
They’ve brought in the likes of James McClean there, someone with 103 caps for his country, he knows how to play football. Tiernan Lynch has brought in ready good players to the Brandywell this window. Looking at ourselves, I’m happy with the players we have. I’ve said it before, but when you’re at a club like Waterford, you want to have players who want to be here and want to actually fight for the club & row in with everyone.
On the pitch, I think we need to be more ruthless. We had chances in the game [against Sligo] last week. When you come in afterwards and look at the stats of the game, I think we’ve had over 2.3 xG in the game, which for me says we should score a goal. Obviously missing a penalty is unlike Podge but these things happen – we said after the game that we can take positives from the 90 minutes in terms of how we played. Towards the end of the game we probably lost our way, but you have to give Sligo credit for that & the subs they made in the attacking third. We should’ve won the game, but we didn’t, and going forward we just have to be a little more ruthless when we get our chances, we have to be clinical in those moments because ultimately that’s what gets you the points.
Only four teams in the league have won a game so far this season, that shows you the type of league this is. If you can win a few games in a row you’ll get a run together for yourselves. There’s six teams including ourselves yet to win, which is probably a bit surreal but that’s the type of league we’re in at the minute. We felt we should’ve won on Friday when we reflect back, but Sligo did come down to the RSC last season and took six points off the club so it’s important that we didn’t lose that game.
We signed Jordan Houston who’s a right-back. He was out of contract, so his last game was back in October. So he will be a bit away from being match fit, so we’ve had him with the medical team & strength and conditioning team this week to try build him up. Will Johnson is another one that has come in and is coming back from a slight injury with Fleetwood. The guys over there [in Fleetwood] speak very highly of him, and he’s one we’re excited to work with once he’s fully up to speed. Both players will need a bit of time to get up to speed with things before they’re in the team, but it was important that we got bodies into the group to give us competition, more options and more cover in the backline.”
TOMMY LONERGAN’S THOUGHTS
“The Brandywell is one of the toughest places to go in the league. It’s obviously a long journey for us, and it’s a big pitch with a lot of supporters backing them. They’ve got some good players this year, they’ve brought in some serious quality this winter, but it’s a game of football and the end of the day.
We’ve got the quality in our side to go win the game, and I think if we can play to what we can, we can definitely give it a good go to get a result on Friday night. We obviously won up there last season. We have a game plan fort tomorrow, so we need to execute it and convert our chances and try finish our opportunities.”
