STEPHEN KENNY WAS full of praise for Kian Leavy and Zach Elbouzedi after they got the goals to beat Galway United and send St Patrick’s Athletic top of the Premier Division last night.

But the Saints boss says the stars of the show for the club have been his medical staff this season.

Leavy suffered a gruesome ankle injury towards the end of pre-season that required surgery before the campaign began. The exciting attacker was back involved within seven weeks and netted his first goal of the year to put St Pat’s 1-0 up at Richmond Park.

Striker Aidan Keena provided a deft assist for Leavy in that move and Kenny revealed that the initial fear was that the “T-junction hamstring” injury he suffered back on 14 March would rule him out for close to four months.

But Keena returned in just seven weeks and, as predicted by Head of Medical Sam Rice, he was capable of lasting close to an hour before needing to be replaced due to the work done by athletic therapist David Mugalu and masseure Christy O’Neill.

Simon Power came on for Keena, another who has had injury issues since arriving in Inchicore. “Sam Rice and the medical team did brilliantly. They’ve been the stars of the show in the last few weeks getting Aidan and Simon back. It was a risk to play Aidan. Not a risk, [because] Sam was confident,” Kenny said.

“Some physios hedge their bets and are on the cautious side but he’s able to call it with conviction all the time. He said he was happy [for Keena] to play but he’d run out of steam, which he certainly did.

“He did the hamstring near the T-junction which is different,” Kenny said of Keena’s injury.

“To get back in the timeframe we did, when we thought we’d lose him for four months. The T-junction is a really bad to tear but we got him back in under seven weeks. We did terrific.

“We wouldn’t normally start someone for the first match in but Aidan has a great, infectious personality. He wants to play, which is a positive sign.”

Keena will be assessed this weekend before a judgement is made on whether he starts again away to Derry City on Monday, and the Saints boss insisted the artificial pitch won’t have a bearing on his selection.

Expanding further on some of those injury setbacks, Kenny said he was “delighted” for Leavy to get his goal as “he’s an incredible individual.”

Midfielder Jamie Lennon was another star performer last night and missed a chunk of the early campaign through injury, while Romal Palmer is also absent. Still, the manner of how they conceded two goals in injury time to lose 2-1 away to Bohemians was a jolt that had to be addressed heading into this Galway test.

Aidan Keena in action. Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO

“We were kicking ourselves, it should have never happened. Instead of feeling good about ourselves and positive all week going into Galway, I suppose it was post-mortems and analysis, because you can’t have that.

“We’re just delighted now to beat Galway because we knew they are tough opponents and have a very effective way of playing and cause you problems. We’re delighted to win.”

Moses Dyer, the league’s top scorer, missed a sitter in front of an open goal from just a few yards out seconds before Leavy gave Pat’s the lead.

“It was surreal because it was like the world stopped for a minute. Everything just stopped. It was an almost surreal moment,” Kenny said.

While counterpart John Caulfield rued Dyer’s missed chance, one he said the striker “would score in his sleep all day long”, the Galway boss had more issue with his side’s approach.

“To be fair to Pat’s, you can see they are possibly going to win the league because they have that type of panel.

“We backed off a little bit too much in the first-half and at 0-0 we had the best chance of the match. We were dangerous on the counter but we probably were standing off too much and they boxed us in.

“At half time we said we’d give it a go and on another night Moses might have got three, but the ball didn’t seem to fall for him tonight. We put them under a lot of pressure even before the sending off.

“But in the second half we were really good and threw everything at them. If we scraped one back we felt we’d have a chance to get something out of it, but it wasn’t to be.”