HAVING COME off the bench to score his first league goal for Shamrock Rovers last night Dean Kelly was enjoying his moment.

As he posed for the cameras while being mobbed by fans and team-mates, the striker still managed to do a fine line in one-liners for post-match quotes. On a night like this even the reporters would have been hugging him, if only there’d been time even for that.

“It’s great,” said the 20-year-old who has packed a fair bit into his career over the last couple of years but was clearly confident he could make his biggest mark yet as long as he got off the bench and into the heart of the action last night. “I was just begging the manager to bring me on, sitting there making eyes at him that said: ‘I’ll win the league for you’, and I did. In the end I scuffed the shot a bit but it still went in.

“I think it was a toss up between me and Gary O’Neill as to who he (manager Michael O’Neill) brought on but when the time came I slipped the gaffer a coin with two heads.”

Assuming the decision wasn’t really prompted by a dodgy coin, the decision to throw Kelly on looked to be the latest good one by a manager who has made more than his fair share of them over the course of this title defence.

There has been talk that it would be the O’Neill’s final achievement at the club and that he would now look to move on to bigger things. However he talked afterwards about much of what has been written being inaccurate and insisted his “intention” now is to sit down with the board, hopefully sort out a new deal and then strengthen the squad.

On a night like this, though, it was hard to find fault with the group he has. “Yeah, we left it as late as we possibly could in the end but the desire that the players showed to win the game tonight even though they knew they’d still have the chance to do it on Friday was phenomenal. But then when you look at everything these players have achieved this year, the Setanta Cup and all the games in Europe, you’d have to wonder whether any League of Ireland team has ever rivalled it.

“We’ve won games with late goals and shown tremendous character at times to come through some very challenging situations – when you think of the two hours that they were out on the pitch in Belgrade for. They’ve shown all the characteristics of a great team and if they’re not quite that yet, then we’re certainly well on the way to creating one.”

Pat Sullivan, for one, is hopeful the manager sticks around. “He’s been phenomenal,” he said. “Not just this season but in his whole time with the club, him and all of the other people who have helped the club get to where it is today.

“Personally, I don’t think he’ll go but none of us really know for sure. If he does it will be amazing for some other club and hopefully it wouldn’t be too disruptive but obviously we’re just all hoping that it doesn’t happen.

“In the meantime,” he said, “it’s fantastic. The whole European thing could have pushed us badly off course and we might have ended up throwing away the league but that hasn’t happened and we’re thrilled.

“We’ve had that a few times, though, to be fair; maybe not with 10 men but there have been times when we’ve been in tight corners and got ourselves out of them or just won when we’ve not played particularly well, like tonight. And like they say, it’s the sign of champions.”