Kearney pleased with his players’ character

A WEEK is a long time in football.

Last Saturday Oran Kearney was left scratching his head in disbelief as his Coleraine side ended up on the wrong end of a 5-1 defeat to Cliftonville, despite creating countless chances.

The shoe was on the other foot at the weekend as it was the Bannsiders, even after going down to 10 men, who grabbed all three points despite their opponents, Lisburn Distillery, creating the better goal scoring opportunities.

It was the Bannsiders first home win over the Whites since 2009.

“Games between ourselves and Distillery have been quite eventful of late and today was no different,” he told Times Sport.

“To be fair to them I think if the game had stayed 11v11 I pictured them getting something out of the game because they were creating chances.

“In the first have they had 12 attempts on goal and we had four and scored two.

“It shows how crazy a game football is. Last week against Cliftonville we were the team who created all the chances yet were behind at the break.

“Today for the first time I was quite content for a sending off because I thought it was going to take something like that to galvanise us. Our performance increased tenfold after it.

“I think it’s only human nature when you’re 2-0 up start to think someone will do the job and you relax too much. But whenever there is a sending off it galvanises teams and makes them determined to hang on to what they’ve got.

“We played the best football of the day in that half hour spell. We kept the ball well and our defending was excellent.

“I was a wee bit disappointed with the goal we conceded, but Paul (Owens) has held his hand up for it, but it’s just one of those things, apart from that I just delighted with the character the boys showed.

“I thought Kyle got a lot of the ball, but I’m not sure Kyle needed to go to ground so far out from goal, he was maybe a wee bit eager to win the ball. But it’s history now and thankfully we held on for the win.”