He’s black, he’s white, he’s a certain type of dynamite, and his double strike in Athlone at the weekend shot Dundalk five points clear at the top of the First Division standings. On the night that the Lilywhite Army made it clear who their new favourite was, David Cassidy responded by netting in both halves to help John Gill’s men to an easy 3-0 victory in the midlands. And, afterwards, the 22-year-old, who returned from injury at the beginning of the month, was obviously thrilled with the win and his own contribution. “Things are going well,” Cassidy admitted to dundalkfc.com.
 
“But it’s not only me - it’s the team as well. I was disappointed to be out for those two or three weeks, but now I’m back, and thankfully I’m back in the team and scoring. It was a good performance tonight. It could have been more than three. We had a good first-half, the second-half wasn’t as good as the first, but it was good as well. Coming to these places is always difficult, and it takes you a while to get going at the start of the game. Coming from the surface in Oriel, a quality pitch that we’re training on all the time, it takes you a while to get used to this. Especially tonight, as we couldn’t even warm-up on the pitch; we had to warm-up on the pitch out the back.
 
“It took us a while to get into the game, but I don’t think we were ever in danger of conceding, even when we weren’t really on top at the start. I thought Robbie (Farrell) had a great game; he set up two goals as well. But it’s the same again, it’s a whole team performance. It’s everybody on the team - nobody had a bad game - it was quality tonight. I think in any game where you go 2-0 up, you kind of go into that comfort zone. It happens to every team, but even though they had a bit more of the ball in the second-half, I still don’t think they troubled us at all.
 
“The main thing is the three points, but it’s the performance as well. We need to carry this through now. The performances are getting better and better every week. The first-half, and the last 20-25 minutes was good again tonight, so we’re getting up to the 90 minutes and full performances. We have high standards and that showed on the pitch tonight as well.”
 
Gill was also pleased with Cassidy’s performance, and is thanking his lucky stars that he was able to capture the central midfielder from Shamrock Rovers during the winter break, despite interest from a number of top flight clubs. “He’s a tremendous little player,” Gill said. “He’s a little gem. He’s a Premier Division player, and that’s why Premier Division clubs tried to sign him. I’m just thankful that we were lucky enough to get him.”