Annesley is happy with Dundalk clean sheet

Louie Annesley helped Dundalk FC towards their first SSE Airtricity League Premier Division clean sheet of the season, but in the aftermath of a 0-0 draw with Waterford, the defender felt The Lilywhites should also have bagged their first win of the campaign.

Captaining the side on Friday night in the absence of Andy Boyle, the 23-year-old ex-Blackburn Rovers man put in an assured performance alongside debutant Zak Johnson.

And while Dundalk created no shortage of opportunities at the other end to claim three valuable points, they were unable to find a way past a newly-promoted Waterford outfit.

“We had chances to win the game, so we’re disappointed that we’ve not won the game,” Annesley told The Democrat afterwards. “We’ve got to build from this. We’ve got to be positive and move on to the next game.

“Ultimately, it’s two points dropped. We’ve stopped a bit of a rot, but bigger picture, we want to win every game we play at Oriel, so we’ll definitely be working towards that.

“That (clean sheet) would be one positive we can take, but we look at every game and positives and negatives of each, but ultimately, we had chances to win the game and probably should have.”

He added: “All our front players are very technical, very fast. We have ability at the top of the pitch. We know that, everyone knows that. You can see it tonight. We have ability. It’s just about putting that into goals and then goals win you games, so there’s something to build off, definitely.”

The Lilywhites felt they should have been awarded a penalty four minutes from time when Cameron Elliott went down inside the box under the challenge of Niall O’Keeffe.

“Obviously I’m going to say it’s a stonewall penalty, it looked it,” reflected Annesley. “We’ll have to watch it back, but it looked like he went to kick it away and then Cammy’s got there first. Apart from that, we did have other chances as well, but the main positive would probably be a clean sheet.”

London-born Annesley now links up with the Gibraltar international team and hopes to earn his 40th senior cap when they face Lithuania in the Nations League this Thursday.

The first leg of that play-out, which Annesley hopes will result in Gibraltar retaining their League C status alongside the likes of Northern Ireland, takes place at Victoria Stadium.  The return leg of the tie will then be played in Vilnius next Tuesday, March 26th.

“We’ve got Lithuania in a double-header, so I’m looking forward to that. And then looking forward to coming back as well and cracking on and get that first win of the season and kick on.”

Ciaran McGuckin is also away on international duty this week, with the Rotherham United loanee called into the Northern Ireland U21 squad for their matches against Czech Republic and Serbia, the latter of which is a European Championships qualifier.

Both players will be itching to get a first League of Ireland win of the campaign when they return to face league leaders Shelbourne at Tolka Park on Friday week, March 29th.

“We take every game in isolation,” said Annesley. “We’ll do our due diligence on them and we’ll look at them and watch them. We’ve played them last season and they’ve not got too many new faces. We know them, we know their strengths, we know their weaknesses, so we’re ready for it.”