Great week For Coleraine

The Bannsiders moved up to fourth in the Danske Bank Irish Premiership and into the semi finals of the League Cup following wins over Glentoran, Crusaders and Ballinamallard United.

They could have been forgiven for feeling a bit weary on Saturday when the Mallards visited The Showgrounds.

But after a slow start which saw the visitors take the lead thanks to former Bannsider Shane McGinty, Oran Kearney’s men bounced back to show their quality.

Jordan Allan, James McLauglin and Neil McCafferty all found the target to move the hosts up to fourth in the table.

“It’s been a great week for the club, three wins in seven days and that’s all you can ask for,” Kearney told Times Sport.

“But it has been tough, Wednesday took a lot out of the boys after a tough game at The Oval. Today was more mental than physical, and to be fair to the lads they kicked on in the second half and deserved to take the three points for a great end to the week.

“It was to be expected that we maybe weren’t straight on it at kick off and we conceded a sloppy goal.

“The lads were disappointed at half time to go in level, but I told them I was delighted with their performance.

“We had a slow start for the first 10 minutes or so, but we came back well, and bar the goal we didn’t really have many scares.

“Coming off the back of a big game you always expect the first 45 minutes to be the hardest. Once you get through that and get the legs up and running again the second half is always that wee bit more straight forward.

“And so it proved, we were that wee bit sharper after the break.

“After we got the second goal Ballinamallard had a little spell when they looked dangerous, but Chris Johns pulled off a great save on to the post which could have changed it into a different game if it had went in.

“But we managed the game really well after that, we kept the ball in their half and frustrated them, people got dragged out of position and we opened them up, and Jordan got in and was fouled in the box for a definite penalty.

“There was no worries about Neil hitting the penalty, he certainly had plenty of practice on Wednesday night, he had a warm and then the real thing!

“You maybe wouldn’t ask a kid to go through what Neil did, but he is an experienced player and you can see from the penalty he didn’t look nervous to me.”

Mallards boss Gavin Dykes felt his side deserved more from the game.

“We started well and took the lead, conceded a sloppy equaliser, but I thought we were the dominant team in the second half,” he said.

“But we gave away another poor goal, a miscommunication between the goalkeeper and the centre half.

“Just after that the keeper makes a great save to deny Johnny Lafferty, but that’s what happens when you’re down at the bottom, everything seems to go against you.”