IRISH LEAGUE REACTION: Loughgall manager Dean Smith on Benji Magee, red card and race for seventh after victory over Glenavon

Thoughts on the match?

"It’s a great win. We probably made it harder for ourselves than we needed to...we had two fantastic chances in the first-half to make it 3-0 and if we take it then I think the game would have been dead and buried.

"We controlled the game well, limited Glenavon to very little and then 10 minutes of madness – Caolan (Loughran) scores an own goal and I need to see it back, but I think he wins the initial challenge but you can’t condone what he did after that (to be sent off) and it puts us under a bit of pressure.

"Thankfully we got the third goal and it was a superb finish from Benji Magee. It was one of those where he nearly has too much time and I thought he was really calm and composed to put it in the net.”

On Magee ending over two-month wait for 16th Premiership goal of the season

"He’s a talented player and the only reason he didn’t start today was that he came off last weekend with an ankle injury and didn’t train on Tuesday.

"He took part in some of training on Thursday and to be honest I didn’t even want to use him today, but our hand was forced and he told me he was fine when he was coming on.

"It’ll do his confidence the world of good. He’s earned us three points today with a superb finish and everybody is happy.”

On Ben Murdock’s first league start since January

"Ben is the club captain and was out injured for a while. He had to bide his time to get back into the team and now he’s back in you can see the calmness he brings to the group and the leadership.

"I think he showed in the last 10 or 15 minutes how good of a defender he is.”

On being defensively solid

"I wasn’t really pleased with how we played in the first-half even though we were 2-0 up. I thought our decision-making was naive at times and I thought we lacked a bit of composure on the ball.

"Coming in 2-0 up you don’t know what to say really, but the second-half we controlled the game a lot better in terms of our shape, discipline and got to grips with their shape.

"Every time we turned the ball over we looked dangerous on the counter-attack and that’s what we played for.”

On how important it was to finish on a high in last match at Lakeview Park

"It’s massive. 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.”

On still being seventh despite winning only five home matches

"If you look at our record over the past few seasons, our away form has been better than our home form. We want to improve our home form because to stay in the league next year it’s going to be critical.”

On sitting seventh with three matches to go

"Everybody around us won so it’s the same as it was before the match. It’s the old cliche but we’re taking it one game at a time and will see where that takes us.

"Tuesday night is massive (against Dungannon Swifts). It’s a derby game first and foremost and Dungannon can still finish seventh so it’s a big game for both clubs. It’s one we’re looking forward to.”

On how much it would mean to finish seventh

"It would mean an awful lot to me personally because if you’d read a lot of newspapers at the start of the season a lot of people had us going down.

"People were maybe surprised we didn’t bring in more players, but we knew and trusted the players we had and 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.”

On Ryan Waide scoring for second consecutive match

"Ryan is a fantastic player and his quality has never been in question. He’s come in and fitted into the group really well.

"He’s enjoying his football and hopefully that form can continue.”