Trialist Louis Britton earns Derry City opening friendly draw at Drogheda United

Trailing 1-0 to Dean Williams' 30th minute goal, the Brandywell men had trialist Britton to thank for the share of the spoils.

The big 20-year-old striker made no mistake from close range on 72 minutes, firing home past Colin McCabe, after substitute Jamie McGonigle had created the opening.

Ruaidhrí Higgins confirmed that the Bristol City forward will continue to train with the club for the coming days, before any decision is made.

New signings Will Patching, Michael Duffy and Brandon Kavanagh all started the game, while centre-back Shane McEleney came off the bench in the second half with a host of youngsters including Tiernan McKinney, Liam Mullan and Daithi McCallion all featured, but Higgins felt that defender Caoimhin Porter had an excellent display at right-back.

Higgins also confirmed the Republic of Ireland U21 international Ronan Boyce has a knee injury and is likely to be missing for a few weeks.

"I really enjoyed the game, but we started a big sluggish as you would expect, but I felt some of our combination play towards the end of the first half was really good, but we lacked a bit of quality with our final ball, we got into good areas a lot but lacked that wee bit of cutting edge, but that will come in the weeks to come," he stated.

"Caoimhin Porter I thought was excellent and I was really happy with him, but the way the players have applied themselves over the last few weeks has been brilliant.

"We are getting there but we still have got four weeks before we face Dundalk, so we'll see improvements week on week."

The Derry boss was also pleased by Britton's overall display, throughout the 90 minutes and he also admitted that a host of other players from his squad could have featured at Head in the Game Park, but he decided against it.

"He scored and hit the crossbar with a header. He's a target man type of striker and he's over for a week or so and we'll see how that goes," confirmed the Derry boss.

"Look, there were six or seven players who could have played here today, but we have got loads of games and we just need to be very, very careful that we don't push people too hard too soon.

"Ronan Boyce has got a medial knee ligament injury and he's going to be the longest term absentee, but it isn't going to be too long. So we are in a good position, but anyone who has any type of minor niggles we aren't going to even consider taking a chance on them."