Dundalk FC :: News

11 APRIL 2008: THRILLED CASSIDY TARGETS TEN

David Cassidy’s second-half cracker earned Dundalk a priceless victory over Waterford United at Oriel Park on Thursday night, as the 22-year-old netted his second goal in two home appearances for the club since signing in the off-season. And, afterwards, the goal hero and ‘Man of the Match’ admitted his delight with the strike, before aiming for at least eight more between now and the end of the season.

“It was good,” Casso admitted to dundalkfc.com. “As a midfielder, you set yourself a target of ten goals for the season; that’s just my personal goal. I thought the one tonight took a little deflection, but you’ll take every little deflection on the way to help you get to the top of the league! Now we’re three points clear at the top of the table, and we just have to look at keeping it that way for the rest of the season.”

Assessing his side’s display, Cassidy admitted: “I’m thrilled with the performance. It took a lot for us coming from last week’s game at Sporting Fingal, where it was disappointing. We were disappointed last week. It honestly felt like a defeat, because it’s a game we should have won, so everybody was absolutely disgusted after the game. We needed to come here and rectify that by winning, and that’s what we’ve done.

“We didn’t start too well in the first-half tonight, but we just bossed the whole second-half - I don’t think they created anything at all. There were a few changes in the team again, and that takes us a while. Unfortunately, it has taken us time to get going in games, and that’s something we’re going to have to improve on if we’re going to win the league. We did come into it probably in the last fifteen minutes or so in the first-half, and then we dominated the second-half.”

A key win, Dundalk now go three points clear at the top, however, Casso stated that just because Waterford were the opponents didn’t mean that the game took on any greater importance than any other match. “It’s still very early in the season to call it a six pointer,” he insists. “We want to win every game. It’s not just about beating the teams around us; we want to win all our games. It’s not as if we’re looking at Waterford as our nearest contenders, because it’s too early in the season to do that. We’re just going to take it training session by training session and game by game, and then build on it from there, and try to get better every time.”

Thursday saw Cassidy start for the first time since suffering a hamstring injury in Longford almost three weeks ago. However, thankfully, David revealed that, despite feeling the affects of not having played much recently, another week’s rest should see him go to Limerick next Friday in full fitness. “I struggled a bit coming into the last fifteen minutes,” he admits, “because I haven’t been training much in the last three weeks. It’s still niggling, but that’s 90 minutes I got there. I got through that, so now we have another eight days until the next match, so, hopefully, I’ll be a lot fitter for that and get another full game in again.”