Glenavon hand 16-year-old midfielder an Irish League debut in Danske Bank Premiership draw with Dungannon Swifts

With Robbie Garrett, Jordan Stewart and Peter Campbell all missing for the match at Mourneview Park, Henderson was called upon to start, playing 73 minutes.

He’s a product of the Lurgan Blues youth academy and Hamilton paid credit to the work that’s being done with the club’s young guns with Henderson the first player that has started with Glenavon’s under-10s and progressed right through to the senior squad.

"He has been buzzing at training,” he told Glenavon’s media channel. “He has been doing well with the reserves and is a kid I've watched since he was nine or 10 years of age.

"He actually played with my oldest lad Callum and he's someone I've watched come through and always thought he had a real chance.

"The problem we had with Cohen a lot of the time is he's very good at gaelic as well - he's probably one of the best players at his age at Armagh so they are fighting for him too.

"A lot of the time he missed parts of the season through that but this season he has committed to his soccer and he has done really, really well in the reserve team games and we brought him to train with the first team over the last few weeks.

"We had Ribsy (Garrett), Peter and Sucka (Stewart) out tonight and had a couple of suspensions so it gave us an opportunity to give another midfielder a chance and we didn't really have any other options in midfield so it was great to see.

"I thought he did really well in the first-half and he was very good defensively in the second-half because we didn’t get as much of the ball going forward. His contribution tonight was excellent and I'm delighted for the academy.

"I know we have brought through a lot of young players but a lot of them have joined us at 13/14/15 - the likes of Bobby (Burns), Sykesy (Mark Sykes) and boys like that.

"He's been the first product of the academy that started at six or seven years of age that has come the whole way from 10s right through.

"I'm delighted we have produced that because it was one of the big things I wanted when I came to the club - I wanted to get that right and I think at this minute in time we have an academy we can be proud of.

"We have a few more kids coming through - we saw Christopher Atherton earlier on in the season as well coming on as a sub but that's the first player we've had starting a game."