Dale Gorman says he would relish the opportunity to captain Leyton Orient if given the chance, after leading out Northern Ireland’s Under-21s in September.

The 22-year-old was handed the captain’s armband by Ian Baraclough for Northern Ireland’s friendly against Luxembourg and also featured for his country during their European Championships qualifying campaign.

Gorman moved to Leyton Orient from Stevenage in the summer and has largely had to contend with cameo appearances from the substitute’s bench, having missed the opening month of the season as he continued his recovery from a fractured ankle.

He made his first start for the club last week against Maidstone United in the FA Cup but has failed to dislodge the likes of Charlie Lee and Craig Clay in centre-midfield following the duo’s impressive start to the campaign, with the latter being named in the National League’s team of the week after his display against Havant and Waterlooville.

Gorman, though, has shown glimpses of what he can do from the bench and featured for the last 20 minutes during Saturday’s game at Brisbane Road, as the O’s ran out 4-0 winners.

The midfielder says it was a proud moment for him to captain his country and hopes he will be given the chance to wear the armband at Orient by head coach Justin Edinburgh in the future.

On captaining his country, Gorman said: “It was a very proud achievement for myself and my family after being given that opportunity. I really enjoyed it and it’s definitely something I’d look forward to hopefully doing at a club.

“Being younger, you try and give as much as you can but you also try and learn from the older ones in terms of the way they talk to people and how they conduct themselves. In the future, it (captaining Orient) is something I’d really like to do and hopefully, one day at Orient I might get the chance to do that.”

The 22-year-old midfielder featured regularly for Northern Ireland’s Under-21s during their European Championships qualifying campaign as they finished in second place in Group B.

Ian Baraclough’s side won their last three games, beating the likes of Iceland and Slovakia, while also securing an historic victory over Spain to keep their hopes of qualifying for the tournament alive.

But despite earning 20 points, Northern Ireland just missed out on a spot in the play offs and while it was disappointing not to qualify, Gorman says it will be a campaign he will always remember in the future.

Asked if it was disappointing to miss out on the play offs, the Orient midfielder said: “It was. We got 20 points and we didn’t even get a play-off which is unheard of. If that’s a senior qualifying campaign, then you’re probably qualifying for the proper thing.

“It was a brilliant campaign and one I’ll never forget as we did so well and I don’t think there’s any other Under-21 team from Northern Ireland that has done that before, so we created a bit of history as well.”