Dave Shanahan has spent a long time as a cameo specialist and he will have had few sweeter moments than poaching Ulster's winner on Saturday night.
An opening weekend of thrilling BKT URC action finished with the 31-year-old scrum-half's quarter-back sneak try as Ulster beat defending champions Glasgow 20-19 at the Kingspan Stadium.
The Dubliner, who started in just one of 25 appearances in the last three seasons, made his Ulster debut back in 2013 and has largely played third fiddle in the scrum-half pecking order, most recently behind John Cooney, currently injured, and Nathan Doak, who started against the Warriors.
However, Shanahan made a telling impact in his 26 minutes on the field, firstly involved as Dave McCann scored his try and then touching down for the late match-winner.
"It feels good. We don't like making it easy for ourselves sometimes, do we?" Shanahan, named man of the match, told reporters after the game.
"We've been pretty up and down. It's a good feeling. When you come on as a sub, you're expected to make a difference and the guys put in a big shift for the majority of the game.
"We were joking downstairs, the forwards must have done 20 or 30 pick-and-goes all the way up to the line and then it just sort of came to me to the end and it was an easy put down. They did all the hard work and it was a great feeling.
"I try to stay pretty consistent with how I think. It's up to the coaches to pick the best player and who the best two 9s are, and the way I look at it is when I get a chance, play my very best and that's all I can do. I was happy I was able to make a decent impact today, anyway."
After the try was awarded, the Ravenhill faithful had to endure a nervy TMO check that, in the end, seemed somewhat unnecessary but Shanahan didn’t mind as long as the decision wasn’t reversed.
"I didn't know what he was checking, maybe that my knee was down and it was a double movement or something," he told RTE Sport.
"Not sure. Maybe it was illegal but the scoreline's there now and it can't be changed!"
Ulster now face a double-header against the Lions and the Bulls in South Africa but do so boosted by the nature of the weekend’s victory.
"It'll be a tough couple of weeks, but hopefully we can kick on from that result and maybe get a couple of results over there, too," he added.
"I think when the South Africans came in [to the URC] and we went there it was a bit of a shock, especially when you went to places with altitude and heat it was like I have never played in something like this before.
"We’re playing in altitude on Saturday a lot of the games have played in it before, so we are more used to it.
"The travel, guys have probably got their routine a bit better than they would before. We’re going mid-week so we’ll train here at the start of the week and when we get out there we know it is all about just being ready for the game so we aren’t training loads when we get there.
"Guys probably develop their own little ways of getting ready for that.
"It is always going to be tough, but we’ll back ourselves to go over there and give it a good shot.
"We have won plenty of times over there, I wasn’t there the last time we went to the Lions, but we won."
"It can be a different game when you go over there, they like to play expansive rugby and if the weather is good it can be tough."
"It will be a good challenge going over there and I’m looking forward to it."
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