After the brickbats, came the heroics, as one of the youngest players in an Ireland shirt, a boy of 19, played manfully to lead his nation out of despair.

And for Troy Parrott, scorer two crucial goals in a 4-1 win in Andorra, it was some doses of criticism of him after a punishing season at club level, where he was loaned out by his Premier League club not once but twice, which helped drive him on to his new-found status as a nation’s saviour.

When the sale of Harry Kane by Tottenham is being debated this summer, the idea of a ready-made replacement for him, in the form of Parrott, is never mentioned. The football world knows that the boy from Dublin’s north inner city has a long, long way to go, as evidenced by his spells on loan.

Millwall ended his loan spell after he failed to score in 11 games, and he scored just twice in 18 appearances for an Ipswich side languishing in mid-table in England’s third tier. 

There were even some eyebrows raised when Parrott got the nod for the Ireland senior squad for this month, as Kenny would later admit.

But Parrott says the experiences he had on the road to Andorra last night made him stronger.

“It's been a tough season to be fair, I've got a lot of criticism but it's finished the way I wanted it to go the whole time, things don't always go according to plan and I am really happy to finish the season,” he said after the game.

"I wouldn't say it's tough to take it on, obviously no-one wants to be criticised but it pushes me and makes me want to do even better.” 

Kenny admitted after the game that Parrott’s goals fed confidence into the rest of the team and he sensed that someone needed to inject life into the side, so why not him?

“To be fair I think the lads felt like it needed something, we needed a spark from somewhere, I seen the ball dropping in space in front of me and I thought, I'll just go for it and the ball ended up in the back of the net,” he explained. 

“Once I got the ball and saw the space in front of me I just wanted to go, it would be silly to turn down the chance to go and I was relieved to see the goal hit the back of the net, it changed the way the game was going.

 “We can take confidence out of it, it's a win and you should always take confidence out of a win and scoring four goals is also big for us, we can take confidence out of that and bring it into the next game.”

After the win, Parrott was hit with the statistic that another Dublin-born striker scored his first international goal on his fifth appearance where Andorra were the victims and he (Robbie Keane) ended up with unprecedented success in the green jersey.

"He was an unbelievable striker and to reach the level of goals he had would be a dream come true, it's good to get off the mark, though,” Parrott said.

“It feels amazing, to be fair, the stuff you dream of when you're growing up. The most important thing is the win, though, it's good to get that.

"That's been a dream, always, growing up, watching Ireland teams, it's always been I want to be there, I want to be at that level. I think last night has helped me and I just want to keep pushing on.”

Parrott has been in a holding spell for a long time, since his emergence with Spurs and the Ireland U21s, then the seniors, and not a lot went right for him since that breakthrough. And he was not alone as the other strikers from Ireland who came onto the Premier League stage at the same time (Adam Idah, Aaron Connolly) also had trials, tribulations and tests. Growing up in public. 

"Obviously when the three of us were coming through the 21s and we were scoring goals and stuff, there were going to be people asking questions,” Parrott said.

"I wouldn't say there's been a heap load of pressure, maybe there has, maybe there hasn't, I just haven't paid attention to it, really, I'm not sure about the other lads, I can't really speak for them. 

"I think the three of us have been thrown into it and are learning on the job, but I think if you ask the three of us, we wouldn't want it any other way. So that's the way it's gone.

"But scoring the two goals is massive for me. It's going to give me a massive confidence boost, right now I feel on top of the world, so it's helped me out a lot.”