Larne 1-0 Gent: Conference League ‘special night’ was ‘no smash and grab’ – Gary Haveron tophyper
Haveron was appointed head coach of Larne just last weekend after Nathan Rooney moved to become head of football because he did not possess the required Uefa Pro Licence for European competition.
“What a start, where do I go from here? It’s incredible, it means so much and I’m so proud for the people. It’s a special night and I hope we can have many more like this,” added Haveron, who is in charge of his hometown club.
“Steadily but surely, we have grown into this competition, the Shamrock [Rovers] game [a 4-1 home defeat] was something that hurt us, we didn’t represent the league as best we could.
“We wanted to come back fighting and we wanted to generate momentum. There is no better way to get momentum than beating a European powerhouse.”
Larne will now turn their focus to domestic matters as they aim to bounce back from some inconsistent early league form to try and make it three Premiership titles in a row.
They trail leaders Linfield by 22 points with six games in hand over their rivals ahead of this weekend’s action and are also in the BetMcLean Cup semi-finals and County Antrim Shield final.
Haveron said: “It’s up to me and the management team to get this level of performance week in, week out. There is no point doing this now in a big game like this with all the razzmatazz that comes with the Conference League, so we need to use it as a springboard.
“We want to be back at this level and we want to compete at this level and take the learnings we had this year on to next year.”
