Gary Haveron celebrated “grit” on the road to glory which left Larne with a fightback weekend win to bounce back from the bruising three-match losing run which had the title-winning boss accepting “this game will kick the life out of you it you feel sorry for yourself”.

Following home hurt in the Premiership title defence to high-profile rivals Coleraine and Linfield, Haveron’s men also suffered a Senior Shield exit to second-tier Dundela.

Ben Arthurs’ 170th goal for Bangor put the hosts on top having earlier missed from the penalty spot when Harry Lynch hit the post.

But Larne regrouped to avoid another pain game as Paul O’Neill left it level past the hour mark before Ronan Doherty drilled home the winning goal as two scorers off the substitutes’ bench.

placeholder image — Ronan Doherty celebrates his match-winning strike for Larne against Bangor. (Photo by Andrew McCarroll/Pacemaker Press)

"This game will kick the life out of you if you feel sorry for yourself, it's not a game where you can lie down,” said Haveron on the official Larne club social media platforms. "Momentum in this game is absolutely everything...when you have it, you just feel invincible, you'll just bounce into the next game.

"When you don't, it's very, very difficult to sometimes pick yourself up and every little setback seems to hit you 10 times harder than it normally would.

"The first 15 minutes they came out and used the conditions, they came out really fast and that put us on the back foot with a lot of throw-ins, a lot of ball in the box and asked questions.

"Got their goal, missed a penalty...so the warning signs were there and they started really brightly.

"After about 15-20 minutes we settled and we were the more dominant team in the game, we played better football, we created more chances.

"We came out the second half and we had to go to the bench...to come in and impact the game and that's what happened.

"Regardless of what happened previous, coming here is always incredibly difficult.

"You need to be resilient, you need to stand up to them...the conditions were horrendous.

"We shot ourselves in the foot and there's no getting away from it...really, really important we came down here, we got three points whichever way they came and I didn't really care.

"I wanted us to show grit, show character...we had to do it the hard way.

"So, for our boys to go a goal down, to show the resilience to come back out at half-time and they had to have that character to go on and win the game...I'm very, very pleased."

BANGOR: Patrick Solis Grogan, Caomhan McGuinness, Reece Neale, Lewis Francis, Harry Lynch, Lewis Harrison, Liam Hassin, Tiarnan Mulvenna, Ben Arthurs, Steven McCullough, Iestyn Hughes. Subs: Lawton McMahon, Ben Cushnie, Jack O'Mahoney, Oisin Devlin, Lucas McRoberts, Mackenzie Strachan, Stephen McGuinness.

LARNE: Rohan Ferguson, Matthew Ridley, Aaron Donnelly, Mark Randall, Kevin O'Hara, Leroy Millar, Tomas Cosgrove, Dylan Sloan, Dan Bent, Montel Gibson, James Simpson. Subs: Jacob Carney, Conor McKendry, Paul O'Neill, Sean Graham, Ronan Doherty, Jordan McEneff, Greg Sandiford.