Heffernan demands focus ahead of Women's National League title run-in

Laura Heffernan has demanded that her charges focus ahead of the vital title race run-in, starting with a clash away to Cork City WFC at Bishopstown this weekend.

With only two games to go in the title race, Wexford FC know that they must match Peamount United’s result against UCD Waves to stand a chance to retain their title. Wexford are currently only one point behind Peamount ahead of the penultimate weekend of play.

Speaking ahead of the huge clash on Saturday, Heffernan has said that there is no room for error at such a crucial juncture at this stage of the season, demanding focus.

“No room for error now, it’s all or nothing in the last two games so I suppose everyone is a little bit nervous. You hope that the experienced players will be able to lift the rest of them through.”

Heffernan is hoping that she can inspire her charges to a win, despite the disappointing defeat to Saturdays opponents in the Cup Semi-Final.

“It’s a difficult one to judge, it’s hard to know whether to change things up or to stick with what we’ve been doing. If we’d had taken some of our chances in the semi-final, it might have been a different game.

“It’s important that the team go out and play the way they can. That semi-final result against Cork can’t have any bearing on this game really, that needs to be out of head and go into it with a fresh mind-set.”

Ignoring claims that Cork will be distracted by next week’s final, Heffernan has said that she is expecting a tough test in Bishopstown.

“Cork have shown throughout the whole season that no matter who they’re playing, they go 100% every time. Obviously, they’ll be looking forward to the final next weekend, but I don’t think it will affect their performance this weekend.”

Keen to ignore proceeding at Peamount’s clash versus UCD Waves, Heffernan says that her girls must focus on their task and then think about the action at Peamount’s game.

“We’re not concerned about Peamount’s game. If we win on Sunday, it goes to the last game regardless. We can’t worry about that, just we need to get the result ourselves.”

Heffernan has called for one last push for the title, while praising the defensive efforts of her side, stating that she is happy where this season has taken her side to date.

“We definitely would have taken this position at the start of the season. We wanted to be in the mix come the end of the season and we’ve done that. We now just need one more push to get the job done.

“Our defensive record has been very good. We’ve got nine clean sheets in the league this year, so we’ve definitely improved defensively but our attacking play hasn’t been as good as we would have liked it to be.”