Dean Smith: My Loughgall players have proven why they deserved their Premiership opportunity

Ryan Waide and Andrew Hoey helped send the Villagers into the break with a two-goal advantage, but they had to handle late pressure as Caolan Loughran’s own goal and straight red card gave Glenavon a lifeline.

Substitute Benji Magee secured all three points in injury time by running clear to slot home his 16th Premiership goal of the season, a first since mid-January.

It marked a 12th league victory of a memorable season for the County Armagh outfit, who have also celebrated wins against the likes of Larne and Glentoran, with eight players that started also involved in lifting the Championship title in impressive fashion last term and Smith admits it would be a special achievement to finish seventh.

"It would mean an awful lot to me personally (to finish seventh) because if you’d read the newspapers at the start of the season a lot of people had us going down,” he said. "People were maybe surprised we didn’t bring in more players, but we knew and trusted the players we had.

"Across the whole season they’ve stepped up and grown into proper Premiership players and that’s a credit to them.

"We see how hard they work and how tight they are inside the changing room and that counts for a lot.

"We wanted to stick with the players because we won the Championship really well last season...the league doesn’t lie and we wanted to give our players the opportunity.

"They were all chomping at the bit and wanted to be Premiership players.

"You can see how hard they work for each other, even at times when it hasn’t went the way we wanted it to this year.”

While Loughgall have excelled this season, Saturday’s success was just a fifth victory in 19 home matches – they’ve collected 18 points from a possible 57 at Lakeview Park compared to 24 from 48 available on the road.

With their last three matches all away against Dungannon Swifts, Carrick Rangers and Newry City, Smith admits he wanted to give their loyal supporters something to cheer about in a final home showing and insists those statistics must improve next term.

"It’s massive (to win the final home match),” he added. “Our home form hasn’t been good and last weekend the game was over after seven minutes.

"We were chasing, dominated against Ballymena to get back into the game and then threw it away.

"We spoke about our home form not being good enough and we wanted to finish on a high for the supporters.

"We aren’t a big place and don’t have a big following, but our supporters follow us home and away and that was for them.

"We want to improve it because to stay in the league next year it’s going to be critical.”