Kearney disappointed as side fail to learn their lessons

A largely uneventful first half swung in Coleraine’s favour four minutes before the break as Kevin Bradley put through his own goal to put Coleraine in front.

But just two minutes in to the second half the momentum swung in the visitors favour as they caught Coleraine cold with two goals in a minute.

Jim O’Hanlon drew the sides level before Richard Clarke bisected the home defence to send Mark Miskimmin clear and the striker dispatched at the second attempt to leave the Bannsiders reeling and Kearney wondering if his side were still in the changing room.

To their credit they pushed hard for an equaliser, even after Michale Hegarty was dismissed for a tackle on Jordan Hughes. Eoin Bradley, Howard Beverland, David Ogilby and Gareth Tommons all went close but there was no cigar.

In the end it was the Glens who found the net again as John McGuigan scored just before full time to leave Kearney wondering where it had all went wrong again.

“I’m very disappointed that we are left empty handed today,” he told Times Sport afterwards.

“When you go in 1-0 up at the break you expect to kick on in the second half.

“But, like too many times this season when we’ve found ourselves in this position, we haven’t done enough to see the game out.

“To concede two goals in a minute is criminal at any level and you don’t deserve to win games with spells like that.

“I don’t know what happened us. I’m at a point, and I’ve just said it to the players, where I really don’t know what’s happening.

“I’m at my wit’s end to a point where it’s so hard to pin point and put something on it.

“After we conceded the goals we spent 15 minutes or so feeling sorry for ourselves and then got ourselves going again and created four really good chances to draw ourselves level.

“But it’s very disappointing because it means we are not learning our lessons from previous games.”

Coleraine’s task won’t get any easier this Saturday when they travel to Ballinamallard, a team they are yet to beat since they have been promoted to the Premiership.

“It’s a good time for that record to go and for us to pick up three points.” said Kearney.

“We are disappointed not to pick up anything from today’s game so it will be a massive test of character for us going to Ferney Park.

“Winning streaks are great and they give you an idea about players, but I’ve been around the game long enough to know that you really find out what your players are made of during spells like this. We’ll find out what characters we have in the dressing room over the next few weeks.

“There is always a fear that you are losing touch with the teams above when you aren’t winning games, but in this league if you do put a few wins together it can catapult you up the league because it is so tight and everybody is beating everybody else.

“Every single Saturday is a cup final and you have to be up for the cup final. We were up for it against the Glens but we were punished for silly mistakes.”