Lee Lynch hopes his stunning late winner against title-chasing Glentoran offered a timely reminder of his explosive value in a Larne shirt.
The versatile forward has had to be patient in recent times with nine of his last 10 league appearances coming off the bench.
The 30-year-old's last start was back on December 27 when he featured in a 3-1 win over Carrick Rangers at the Loughview Leisure Arena.
After rifling home his screamer of a winner in Friday night’s 2-1 win over the Glens, Lynch, said: “Thats me up to seven league goals for the season and on a personal note I’m happy with that.
“I had a flying start to the season and obviously I’ve just needed to be patient because we have a very good squad here and I have to be part of it, like we all are.
“I’ve just been patient and I’ve been working hard. It was pleasing to come on and make an impact, but I’m more happy that it helped us get a massive three points.”
Lynch, a 69th minute replacement for Mark Randall, fed off a pass from fellow substitute Andy Scott before arrowing an unstoppable shot past Aaron McCarey.
It was a welcome win for Larne who had suffered back-to-back defeats to Linfield and Crusaders in their previous two Premiership outings.
“We’ve obviously had a tough couple of weeks and as a group we made the point to ourselves that we needed to get three points from this game,” said Lynch.
“We have been battling hard the past couple of weeks but things haven’t been going our way so we kind of came together as a group.
“We spoke about things behind the scenes and said that we needed to start putting more three points on the board to get us up the table where we think we should be.
“They’re always tough games against Glentoran and it was one of those games where a goal would have nicked it and we’re just glad it was us that got it at the end.”
On his 86th minute winner, Lynch, who joined Larne in 2019 after parting company with Sligo Rovers, said: “It was a good time to see it go in.
“When wee Andy (Scott) comes inside like that he either wants a one-two or is looking to play a clever pass. When he came inside I thought ‘I’m just going to drop the shoulder and shoot’.
“We had the wind in our favour in the second half and we had actually been saying on the sidelines that we should be shooting on sight given the conditions.
“I was just delighted to see it go in and really delighted to get the three points. It was an important win.”
