NI's Burns will 'savour' clean sheet in Romania win

Burns kept her first clean sheet for Northern Ireland in six games

Northern Ireland goalkeeper Jackie Burns said that she will "savour" a clean sheet after her side beat Romania 1-0 at Windsor Park on Tuesday.

Teenager Kascie Weir scored the winner with her first international goal, but Burns was equally as important to the win, pulling off a number of saves including one in injury-time to thwart Mihaela Ciolacu.

After five games without a clean sheet, Burns was pleased with the defensive effort in the gritty win.

"We savour clean sheets as much as we can, we try and get them whenever we can, but with opponents now it is becoming a bit more challenging so it was good to get it and it sets us up well for the next camp," she said.

"You don't really want those opportunities [Ciolacu chance] but that is what you train for as a goalkeeper to be able to pull off these saves whenever you need to so to be able to pull off a save like that to keep us in the game puts me in a happy place."

The 28-year-old, who will now move to Canada to join her new side Calgary Wild, was also pleased with the contributions of the forwards in Weir's well-worked winning goal.

"The last few games we have lacked in that department, we gave them [attacking players] the freedom to express themselves and play the way they can play coming into this game," she added.

"They just needed to back themselves more and it's probably one of the best goals we have scored with the link-up play."

Northern Ireland are now three points behind group leaders Poland, who they face next month, and Burns is confident that her side can produce a better display at home than they did in Gdansk when they lost 2-0.

"We know Poland are a good opponent and they've proved that by qualifying for the Euros, we don't overlook them, but we want to challenge ourselves and compete against the higher-ranked teams."