There will not have been a more popular goalscorer than Saturday’s match-winner.

You could see it in the dugout, with the players and staff mobbing the diminutive Northern Irishman in the full-time celebrations.

And you could feel it on the terraces, the unbridled joy of a last-minute winner magnified by the scorer being such a likable and hardworking player, who you can tell it meant the world to.

Shayne Lavery had quite the afternoon. He registered an assist and then a victory-clinching goal in amongst a nearly flawless 45-minute performance that helped swing the game in United’s favour.

Only seven minutes after coming on, he showed a fantastic turn of pace out wide and hit the byline before drilling an instinctive pull-back that found an awaiting Ben Knight to tuck home. And then, after tirelessly running channels and proving a constant menace to Barnsley’s inexperienced backline, he turned in the rebound from a Louis Appere shot in the 92nd minute from point-blank range to take all three points.

Neil Harris called it the best 45 minutes he’s seen by any player in the whole league this season.

These returns are the least his performances this season have deserved. And it’s not the first time Lavery has changed games from the bench. He’s been a half-time substitute three times this season, each time with the U’s being 1-0 down. They’ve gone on to take seven points from those fixtures.

If you add in Oxford away, where he entered the pitch in the 55th minute and was at the heart of the move that Knight equalised from just two minutes later, then it’s clear how influential his impact has been. On Saturday, he put the icing on the cake.

It shouldn’t really be much of a surprise. Lavery is simply a very, very good footballer. We’ve known for a long time now that if he could be relied upon to play 90 minutes every week, he just wouldn’t be playing for Cambridge United.

He likely wouldn’t even be playing in League One. When he first joined Blackpool, he proved himself to be up to Championship level even at such a young age. Plenty of people thought dropping to League Two was below him, and the stats seem to reflect that. If you look at the shots per 90, shots on target, xG and goals metrics, you’ll see Lavery led them all last season.

Despite all that quality, Lavery’s story has always been dominated by injuries, and more specifically his hamstrings.

There weren’t too many eyebrows raised when he was released after promotion. It seemed like an unfortunate reality that to compete in League One we needed to be ruthless and couldn’t carry a player who could only be relied on to play a third of a football match.

There were even plenty of discussions about what sort of future he had in the game. Who was in a position to take on a player of such inherent unreliability?

The look on his face when his hamstring went for the most recent time away at Bromley seemed to tell the whole story. So those aforementioned eyebrows were certainly raised when the Northern Irishman’s new one-year contract was announced six weeks or so after apparently departing the club. It was a calculated gamble. Can a high-quality but unreliable player get enough minutes and find a good enough rhythm to regularly impact performances and results in the third tier? Or are we wasting a crucial spot in our striker department on someone who simply cannot get on the pitch enough?

In these opening months of the season, he has undoubtedly started answering that question by being so integral in the team’s impressive start. But with the looming threat of a hamstring injury hanging over his head as it always is, the next part of it is proving the odds wrong and staying fit for a significant period of time, even if it is just in his new specialised supersub role.

Saturday might have been his first goal of the season – and remarkably, his first away goal in a United shirt – but it was the biggest sign yet that the gamble is paying off.