Ryan Harley scored the goal that kept Exeter City in Coca-Cola League One – but in his typical laid-back and modest manner, he refused to call himself a hero.

The Grecians were staring at relegation to League Two as they were drawing with Huddersfield Town, but with eight minutes remaining, Harley crashed home a brilliant 20-yard volley to send the fans into raptures and ensure Exeter of the win they needed to stay up.

"It's brilliant for everyone here, a lot of people say we don't deserve to be in League One, but as a team, we believe we are good enough and I think it is just rewards for how well we have played over the course of the season," Harley said.

"It is always nice to be the hero if you want to call it that, but it is a team performance. We are all in it together and everyone is delighted, the manager is delighted as well and he deserves it because he is a top manager and gets us playing. It's great."

On his goal, Harley added: "I think it was a long ball and it was in and around George. It came of his shoulder or his chest, but he didn't mean to give it to me.

"I didn't have a lot of time to think about it, as it came to me, I just hit it and luckily enough, I hit it well. I knew it was in as soon as I hit it.

"I have had a few big goals since I have been here, you could say it's the biggest because it kept us up. I have scored other goals that have been big goals."

The Grecians made a disastrous start when Gary Roberts capitalised on Matt Taylor's mistake to silence a capacity St James' Park crowd. But the captain atoned for his error with the equaliser 20 minutes later when he thumped in a header from Harley's corner.

The former Bristol City man now feels Exeter can kick on next season, but the in-demand playmaker refused to be drawn on his own future.

"I can't really comment on that. You never know what is going to happen. I'm not saying I want to leave, but I do want to play as high as I can, but we will see what happens," he said.

"Hopefully we can push on again next year. I'm not going to say we will win the league, but hopefully we will do a lot better than we did this season."