Stephen Bradley believes his Shamrock Rovers team will "only get better" after they edged past St Pat's to pick up their first win of the SSE Airtricity Men's Premier Division campaign.
Danny Grant's fine individual goal settled a tight contest, and gave the Hoops a most welcome three points. It may be very early in the campaign, but they had started the night bottom of the table and losing too much ground to title rivals is never ideal.
Still, Bradley was calm afterwards as he aired his faith in the behind-the-scenes work that he says will help new faces gel and more familiar ones return from injury.
"That wasn't a deflection. The results weren't good but the performance were there and I knew we were just there.
"The players showed that tonight. I thought we desreved to win the game. I thought we were pretty comfortable in the end to be honest.
"This team is only going to get better. We know that. We see that season after season. It's an important win, we enjoy tonight and we move on.
"It's always the same every year. This league, the first two rounds of games, you can't call it. It's very nip and tuck, then it starts to even out."
On Grant's decisive effort, he added: "We showed him a couple of opportunities at half-time (where) he could have shot. To be fair to him he works every day after training shooting left and right foot. He's got great quality, so we said to him at half-time, pull the trigger. It was a hell of a strike."
Saints boss Stephen Kenny was frustrated but not too downbeat after watching his side largely match their opponents throughout. In the end, it came down to small margins.
"It was an evenly contested game," said Kenny. "Both teams played a lot of good football, a lot of attempts on goal, but clearcut chances, real clearcut ones were not that many.
"I think Mason Melia hitting the bar with a point-blank header (in the first half) was a turning point. We'd a great chance when it was played through to Aidan Keena one on one, the keeper just managed to nick it.
"Rovers played well on the night, they obviously have a lot of quality in their team. Although we beat their press in the first half quite easily, our attacking play lacked a bit of cohesion. In the second half we'd loads of attacks, and were full of running, but we coudln't get that goal we needed."
