David Hurley wasn’t aware he had bridged a 20-year gap to the last Galway United player to score 20 goals in a season when his brace against Cobh Ramblers took him to that apparently elusive mark last Friday, but after allowing himself a quick smile when told about it, he was very much focused on the bigger picture of the win itself.

Alan Murphy scored 27 goals in the 2003 season, hitting 21 in the league, five in the FAI Cup, and one in the League Cup as he became just the second United player to break the 20-goal barrier.

It won’t come as a surprise to older United fans that Paul McGee was the first man to hit that magical figure, and he did so twice during what was United’s golden era of the mid-1980s. ‘Ski scored 21 in the 1985/86 season, 13 coming in a league campaign in which United finished a club-high second in the Premier Division, with the other eight goals coming in the League Cup.

The former Republic of Ireland international scored 13 times the next season, before hitting 20 in 1987/88, with every one of those goals coming in the league, and Hurley has now joined that duo in breaking the 20-goal mark for the season.

“Really? Yeah, it is good, at the start of the season you have set goals, you want to score as many goals as possible, so it it’s good to hit that figure – I scored 7 last season, and that was my highest for a season, so I definitely didn’t think I’d hit 20 this season but I am delighted,” says the Cork native, who looks like being a run-away winner of the club’s Player of the Season award for the season.

It helps that Hurley is the club’s penalty-taker – nine of his goals this season have been from the splodge of paint 12 yards out from the goal-line, and he has praised his team-mates in winning those spot-kicks, but the has also been proficient from free-kicks, with three of the four goals he scored last week coming from set-pieces.

Pictured: David Hurley (right) celebrates with his team-mates after scoring from the penalty spot against Athlone Town in May. Photo: Michael Gough