Irish League manager's 'baby bounce' celebration with 8.5 very special reasons to cheer

​Far beyond the three points, four goals scored and 10th clean sheet of the campaign, the final whistle on April 11th arrived around 23 hours after the birth of his first son, James, at 8.5lbs.

"It’s brilliant...we had a baby bounce,” laughed Lavery, also a father to daughters Amelia (11 years old), Sophia (6) and Olivia (3). “My baby son was born around 6pm on Friday evening, so I headed down to the match today with a real positive vibe.

"It’s been a juggle...heading out from training on Thursday, over all day Friday from 6am in the Royal with my wife Stephanie until James was born about 6pm, then back over this morning before the game.

"Now it’s straight back down the road to, hopefully, bring them home.”

Lavery could be forgiven for allowing thoughts to wander to his wife and family over the closing preparations for the weekend trip or from Saturday’s Tandragee Road touchline.

However, his players certainly adopted full focus for the latest forward step in what Lavery views an “incredible” season for the promoted club.

"Over the moon for the players because Annagh are a really, really top side in the Championship...experienced, always in or around the promotion chase and, again of course, this year,” said Lavery, as Queen’s celebrated penalty joy for both Matthew Hughes and Ambrose Ajala, plus Daniel Dillon and Charlie Chapman on target towards 4-0. "Our own job is to make sure that we just give a performance we're proud of and that's what we've done.

"Really, really happy...we came into the league, obviously new into the Championship with a team most of them inexperienced, lots of them students dipping their toe.

"And we just wanted to be competitive in every game and see where that takes us...the worry was that you're rooted to the bottom of the table but at least I knew that would give us the development time that we needed to understand the league.

"We knew that we had a good team...where we are now, it's incredible, a real credit to the players.

"They've just got that real desire to do well and take instructions on board and they're talented.

"It gives us a real good benchmark to know where we're at and performances like today, we know we're not that far away ourselves from being a really top team in this league.

"The game plan all week was basically a mirror of today...we knew Annagh always start really intensely against us and today the weather was a factor as well.

"Particularly whenever we were playing against that wind, we just managed the first half in the way that we wanted to...defensively resilient, resolute and counter-attacking football.

"You always try and finish as high as you can, we're still in with a shout for another place up the table and that's our next goal...we're not just playing for pride, we want to go in and try and finish as high as we can because that'll take us into the summer and we can build.”