Dean Curry admits lifting Irish Cup is 'up there with the best moment in my life' as Dungannon Swifts complete 'underdog story'

The 30-year-old has been managing a knee injury throughout most of his senior career, but it has continued to get progressively worse in recent times and limited his involvement this season.

Curry was only able to register 17 Premiership appearances and hadn’t played in almost a month prior to Saturday’s showdown with Cliftonville, but produced a stunning performance alongside partner Danny Wallace to keep the Reds at bay until a crushing Shea Kearney equaliser in the 92nd minute.

His leadership was crucial in helping Dungannon, who had been reduced to 10 men following Steven Scott’s controversial dismissal, bounce back and he has now etched his name in the history books as the first Swifts skipper to lift the famous Irish Cup.

Curry revealed after scoring in Dungannon’s semi-final victory over Bangor that he almost retired in September before being convinced by boss Rodney McAree to continue, but the former Institute star could now be set to call it a day on a dream high.

"This is up there with the best moment in my life - I don't know if my wife will be too happy with me saying that!" he laughed. “This is what I've worked so hard for all my career.

"You want to enjoy moments with your family and team-mates. What emotion that is...I'm going to celebrate hard let me tell you!

"A wee club like Dungannon, nobody gave us a chance at the start of the year.

"If we said we were going to finish fourth and win the Irish Cup, everybody would have laughed at us.

"It's an underdog story, what a story. Nobody gave us a chance and now we're going to Europe.

"All you want to do when you play football is win trophies and thankfully I have."

Even Curry had doubts about how he’d manage to get through an extra 30 minutes after Kearney’s equaliser having only played five times since the start of March, but he was driven on by a motivation to repay McAree, who has helped get the defender through a testing time.

"He put faith in me because I don't train on a Thursday,” added Curry. “Sometimes I'll go to Rodney and say 'I'm going to train' and he'll say 'no you're not, you're going to the gym'.

"I just try and repay him when I'm on the pitch and I'd run through a brick wall for him.

"I haven't played in three weeks so at one stage I was looking over at Rod stretching to see if he could see me!

"I thought when we got to around the 89th minute that we were going to do it, but to be fair it was a great strike.

"I knew with Bigi's (Gael Bigirimana) clearance off the line (in extra-time) and wee moments...we dug deep and they never really opened us up, even down to 10 men. I thought we were going to do it and felt we deserved it."