Rodney McAree views Irish League 'Goal of the Season' strike as perfect Dungannon starting point

The Swifts kicked off the campaign at Stangmore Park with a spectacular strike by Dillon that proved the main talking point from the 1-1 draw with Coleraine.

Each manager entered the game with past time on the clock in charge of the opposition – McAree moving to Coleraine in 2018 from the Swifts and opposite number Dean Shiels having first stepped into Irish League management with Saturday’s hosts.

Familiarity may have been a factor as the weekend clash failed to spark into life with an overall entertainment level to match that of Dillon’s long-range effort which broke the deadlock.

The Bannsiders managed to salvage a point when Matthew Shevlin steered a shot home on 81 minutes in the 1-1 draw.

"Kealan Dillon is just about to get 'Goal of the Season' here...it was a fantastic strike,” said McAree following the Sports Direct Premiership fixture. "Kealan has that in his locker to be fair, he scored a couple of very good goals last season from distance.

"I thought as soon as it left his boot it had a real good opportunity of ending up in the back of the net.

"We'll not discourage him from shooting...if he gets into those areas we'll always encourage him to get shots off.

"It was a fantastic goal to put us 1-0 up at half-time."

As much as McAree enjoyed watching Dillon’s goal, his focus was also on the mounting injury list and the Swifts boss viewed selection problems as significant.

"I thought we did very well for large parts, we knew we were going to be forced into changes,” said McAree. "Losing John McGovern in the first half was probably the biggest blow because we knew 'Mitch' (Andrew Mitchell) wasn't going to last the full 90 minutes, so John was the one going to go centre-forward.

"Tom Maguire can play centre-forward, he goes down injured too.

"We lost a few through injury and it affected us a little bit.

"But, ultimately, they've only had one attempt on our goal which ends up in the back of the net.

"So it's a wee bit frustrating but, against a full-time outfit, for large parts of it we were exceptional."

McAree picked out his players’ composure as central to Swifts progress.

"Gael Bigirimana and Leo Alves were particularly very good, they put their foot on top of the ball and kept it for us and showed the composure we needed at that stage of the game,” he said. "Unfortunately we don't get the three points but I'll settle for one.

"We led quite a few times last season then, in the second half, would throw it away and ended up not getting any points.

"So we have to take the positives out of the fact we were leading (today) at half-time and able to dig in and see the game out to get a point.

"So we see it as a positive start for us and something to build on.”

He added, around preparations for future Premiership tests: "It's more a case of just getting them back in, getting the recovery and, hopefully, we'll be good to go next Saturday.”