DEFENDER Lloyd Kelly expressed his delight in getting off the mark for Cherries and admitted: “It was a long time coming.”

The flying full-back scored Cherries’ third goal during Saturday’s 3-1 victory over 10-man Norwich City, with a low drive which beat Canaries keeper Tim Krul.

It was his first goal in 46 games for the Dorset outfit – his previous strike before that came for Bristol City against West Bromwich Albion in September 2018.

Reflecting on his inaugural goal for Jonathan Woodgate’s side, Kelly told the Daily Echo: “It was a long time coming.

“I think I said at the start of the season that I wanted to try to get as many goals as I can.

“Obviously, I’ve left it late there but I am glad to finally get my first goal.”

Kelly’s strike added to goals from Sam Surridge and Arnaut Danjuma, as Cherries took a huge step towards securing a Championship play-off place.

They came from behind at Carrow Road after Emi Buendia scored a fifth-minute opener.

The game however turned on 17 minutes when Norwich full-back Dimitris Giannoulis was sent off for a rash challenge on Ben Pearson.

“You know the quality Norwich have,” said Kelly.

“They caused us a lot of problems in the first 10 or 15 minutes and them going down to 10 men changed the dynamics of the game.

“It kind of gave us the momentum we needed. From then you could say it was comfortable for us to create overloads in wide areas and create chances, which we did in scoring the goals.

“Sometimes when teams go down to 10 men as the opposition, you could say it’s harder to break them down because they go into a low block but it was a professional job at the end of the day.

“We spoke at half-time and the message was just to keep the ball going wide, create overloads and the chances will come.

“That’s where most of our chances did come in the second half.”