Oran Kearney pleased as Coleraine take advantage to climb the table

With Larne and Crusaders playing out a thrilling 3-3 draw at Seaview and Ballymena United and Cliftonville inactive due to their game being postponed because of the wintry conditions the Bannsiders had a chance to steal a march on those teams.

After the ground staff had worked hard to make sure the pitch was playable the Bannsiders knew they had to pick up the three points.

“It’s probably not something we look at pre-game but it’s something you pick up after winning,” said boss Oran Kearney.

“When another team doesn’t play you know you can make a move but we all have to play the same amount of games and there are games against each other, so it all evens itself out.

“The key thing today was to make sure we got the three points and we knew Dungannon had deservedly beaten us at their place, so we had to put right that performance and I think we have done that today.

“When I was here at 12:30pm today I didn’t know how it was going to go ahead.

“However, for the game to go ahead, there was hard work behind the scenes by Trevor Moffatt and Tommy Doherty and we were delighted to get the game on.

“After the game got the go-ahead, it was important we got the three points and we are glad to have done that.”

The home side made a fast start at The Showgrounds and scored inside eight minutes thanks to Aaron Jarvis.

The couldn’t find that crucial second goal though despite dominating the rest of the half and that was the only down side for Kearney as his side had to wait until the 77th minute to make the points safe through Eoin Bradley’s spectacular strike.

“I think the critical side of today is that we scored our two most difficult chances,” he said.

“We had two or three one-on-ones in the first twenty minutes and we had lots of other chances in the game but Gareth Deane makes a fantastic save on 50 minutes that could make it 1-1 and game on. Those are the moments where it can be highly frustrating.

“We came in after the game happy but I had a bit of a go despite winning four games on the bounce as Gareth has had to make great saves against Warrenpoint and Carrick recently when the game wasn’t dead and buried, before doing it today when we should be three-nil ahead.

“I’m not saying you can’t keep getting away with it but it’s important when you have a purple patch, like we did in the first half hour when we had five good chances, you have to weigh in with goals.

“The little run we are on at this moment in time and the fact we have shown that little bit of strength and steadied the ship by securing 12 points out of 12 has been brilliant by everybody.”

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