Striker Kris Dennis made it 12 goals for the season and 100 from 282 career appearances at Salford City on Saturday afternoon as he yet again showed his uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time.
With just over 1,300 fans there to enjoy the moments with him, it was a case of hold on to your hats as players and fans converged to celebrate the victory.
“Scenes like that are what you’re in football for,” he told us after the game. “Things like that don’t come around often so you’ve just got to make the most of it. We’ve sent the fans home happy, that’s brilliant.
“You can’t explain how it feels really, but it’s why you’re involved in the first place. You want to get results like this in front of the fans who have travelled in these numbers.
“You could really see the difference they made when it went to 1-1. It could have got a bit shaky, but they were still with us the whole way.
“Thankfully we got our second goal with about 20 minutes left and there was only going to be one winner from there.”
The start to the game, a fourth minute close-range finish as he gambled on a touch from the keeper, set the tone as the team showed a professional approach, even when it wasn’t all going their way.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes when Fin Back shot across the keeper,” he explained. “I thought to myself that the keeper might nip it into my path and luckily that’s what he did.
“Happy days, hopefully I’ll get a few more like it. They’re a team that was around us, so we knew we needed to get a result. Thankfully we did.
“Like I say, I was thinking that if Fin goes across the keeper it might come my way. Thankfully their defenders were sleeping and I was there to tap it in.
“For the second one I was actually struggling a bit with cramp, so I decided I’d just stand there and hope for the best. Luckily Mellish crossed it and it took a deflection. It fell to me and again it’s happy days.
“It was good from Mellish, he’s a weirdo isn’t he! He gets everywhere. I was getting cramp towards the end of the game so I could hardly move.
“I thought I’d just stand in the box and hope for the best. It took a big deflection and it fell to me, and that’s just even more happy days.”
Was he miffed when he was replaced before getting the chance to register a hat-trick?
“No, no, I wanted to come off,” he insisted. “I thought he was going to bring me off before he did. There was a ball that got played into the corner and I thought to myself, I can’t move here, because the cramp had set in.
“The guy beat me to it so I stood in the middle and hoped for the best. That’s what got me my second goal, just standing there and hoping for the best.”
And on reaching the century of finishes, he responded: “Is it! I didn’t know that, to be honest. I’m buzzing with that.
“Hopefully I’ll add to it before the end of the season and get well into the hundreds. Look, what’s not to enjoy about this.
“I’m playing footy for a living in front of all these fans. I just take each day as it comes and hopefully we’ll have even more days like this in the near future.
“I really don’t know what to say about the amount. I didn’t have any idea how many I’d scored. As long as you keep playing and trying to score, the goals will come. I really am buzzing with that.
“But as long as we’re winning games and pushing up the table then it’ll mean we’ll have something to play for come the end of the season. If we keep scoring goals hopefully we’ll be winning. We’ve just got to be up there.”
Described as one of the most complete performances from this group by the manager, there was little argument there from the man who had spearheaded the charge.
“I’d say so, yeah,” he agreed. “To a man we were brilliant but, as I’ve said, there’s no point winning here if we can’t back it up in the next few weeks.
“We’ve got a couple of home games coming up in the league and we’ve got to put more markers down.
“Teams will look and see that we were a point apart before the game and they’ll see that we’ve come here and smashed them. Hopefully teams will take a note of us and think that they don’t want to be going up there to Cumbria.”
The Blues didn’t get it all their own way, with a response required to an early second half equaliser.
“They were always going to have a spell in the game, and after half-time they were on top of us a bit,” he said. “They got the goal but they didn’t really threaten after that.
“Once we got our second there was only going to be one winner and we just ran over them. Again, you have to remember that the fans helped us when the scores were level.
“Mellish had one saved when he broke through and the noise went through the roof. They were behind us all the way after that and it really does help. Thankfully we got the win for them.
“That’s what we’re about, we don’t let our heads drop, we keep going and we know we’re going to get chances. We’ve just got to be there to finish them off and Callum did that with a brilliant strike from the edge of the box. There really was only one winner then.
“In the end we could have scored more. I think that’s what we’ve got to do. You need to get your goal difference up because you never know where that could bring you towards the end of the season. As long as we’re shooting and trying to score more, hopefully we won’t be far off.
“The challenge now is to keep going. There’s no point in coming to places like this and winning then not backing it up.
“Sutton is the next league game after the FA Cup game next week, and it’s two massive home games after that. Hopefully we’ll be pushing up the league with wins from both.
“You can get points here and there but you need wins on the board to be pushing up the table. We want to keep doing it so we are up there come the end of the season.”
