SLOGGETT: WOMEN'S TEAM ARE PIONEERS

Ahead of Thursday evening's second-leg tie with FCB Magpies, Gavin McLaughlin sat down with Greg Sloggett who spoke about his girlfriend Chloe Mustaki's involvement with the Republic of Ireland at the FIFA Women's World Cup. Below is an excerpt from the conversation. The full interview will be published in Thursday's match programme.

GMCL: Thursday is a big day for you. You obviously have our game with FCB Magpies that evening but on Thursday morning you’ll be watching your girlfriend Chloe Mustaki make history with the rest of the Republic of Ireland team when they take on Australia in the opening game of the FIFA Women’s World Cup…

GS: Yeah, and thankfully it hasn’t clashed with training or anything like that. I think the gaffer would have had a difficult conversation with me otherwise! Ah, look, it’s great, such an exciting day. A European adventure and a world adventure on the same day and I think everyone around the country is looking forward to seeing how the girls get on over there.

GMCL: How has Chloe and the rest of the squad settled in? There was obviously a bit of controversy over the weekend with the game against Colombia being called off early…

GS: They've been acclimatising a lot. They played France in Dublin before they headed off and there was an injury scare with Katie McCabe so when they got over there and played Colombia, I think it took them by surprise that it was a kind of rough and tumble sort of game. Denise O'Sullivan obviously went off on a stretcher and I think in the aftermath of that, they decided there was no point in taking risks and letting things get out of control. With the time difference, it's been difficult to have conversations with Chloe. Even this morning, she was training when I was getting up, but they're all set over there and they're looking forward to Thursday.

GMCL: As the World Cup gets closer, you can feel the momentum building…

GS: Yeah, it’s huge. Whenever anyone talks about World Cups and stuff like that, you think of Italia 90 or for me, the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea and Damien Duff against Spain. Nobody has any recollection of any women's competitions and this is it now, the start of a time when girls and boys will think back of this competition being the first real major one that they’ll be able to look back and remember. You can feel the support from the country getting behind them and I'm delighted for them because, to me, these girls are pioneers for Ireland and they're spearheading it for us now.

GMCLL: You obviously have things to look after for Dundalk FC but it must be tough not being there in person to watch it.

GS: It is. In any other career, you'd take unpaid leave or whatever, but it's just not like that in football and Chloe understands that. I was at the qualifier in Hampden Park last year and it was so important for me to get to that because I knew that if they did qualify, I'd never get to go to the World Cup so it was great to be there.

GMCL: The game with Australia on Thursday is followed by the second group game against Canada on Wednesday. It’d be nice to be watching that in a hotel in Iceland or Wales next week…

GS: Hopefully, yeah! Fingers crossed. We'll not get ahead of ourselves, we need to win on Thursday first but it would be nice!