'The best day of my life': Coleraine's hometown hero 'dreamt' of Irish Cup glory after cruel injury blow

Having scored in their semi-final victory over Larne, Kane was cruelly ruled out of a Windsor Park showpiece decider through injury a matter of weeks before Oran Kearney’s side sealed a 3-1 win over Cliftonville.

Kane was still part of the celebrations, hurtling down the touchline on his crutches to savour a first competition crown since 2003, but it didn’t feel quite the same.

However, eight years on, Kane played a full part in Coleraine’s 3-2 weekend win over Dungannon Swifts – Matthew Shevlin’s brace and a Joel Cooper strike proving decisive.

Having spent the entirety of his career at The Showgrounds, Bannsiders skipper Kane is aware how much the latest Irish Cup success means to the club’s supporters and experiencing his dream moment was certainly worth the wait.

"It’s unbelievable, I dreamt of this moment from when I started playing for Coleraine,” said Kane. “I scored in the semi-final in 2018 and I thought I was going to have that moment then.

"Winning it in 2018, I still felt part of it because I still take a sense of being a fan and being a massive part of it, but also, going home that night and not having a medal was disappointing as a player.

"Now to do it as the captain of my hometown club is just a feeling I can't describe.

"It's a crazy feeling because I know probably 75% of the people in the stands and I know what it means to the people of the town.

"I spoke to a lot of people this week about what the people of the town have done, how they've made the town look, even this morning.

"The numbers that they've turned out in today, I think that's the biggest we've ever had. To go over in front of them and to be a Coleraine boy and to be able to do that is probably the best day of my life, to be honest.”

Dungannon had multiple chances to go ahead early on – Ryan Schofield produced fine saves to deny Sean McAllister and Kealan Dillon before Shevlin opened the scoring.

While Coleraine won all five of their Premiership split fixtures, Dungannon lost each of their five, including an 8-0 defeat to Larne last weekend, but Kane always knew Rodney McAree’s men would provide a stern challenge.

"The first 15 minutes probably didn't go to plan, to be honest,” he added. “We've got big Ryan Schofield to thank – that's why we've brought him to the club.

"We've probably seen the best of him in the past four months since he's come back into the team.

"But cup finals are never going to be pretty, very seldom do you see someone turning up to a cup final and steamrolling.

"I think a lot of people spoke about the form of us going into this cup final and the form of Dungannon, but it goes completely out the window.

"We're playing the cup holders, they're a good team and they've a good manager.

"I think that's where we've probably evolved as a group...when you're not playing well, stay in the game.

"We took a lot of belief at half-time. It's probably one of our worst performances since we played Larne at Inver at the start of January.

"We were still 1-0 up at half-time, so you take massive, massive belief out of that, to know that we'd only been in first or second gear, we knew we could kick on.

"Scoring early in the second half helps, but it doesn't help that much when you concede a couple of minutes later.

"But, listen, we've got the trophy. At the start of the day, if you'd have said to me that the game would have finished 10-9, but you're still going to win, then I wouldn't have cared.”