Loughgall feel confident of competing with Premiership’s best, says assistant manager Andy Smith after narrow loss to Coleraine

The Championship winners played their first match at Lakeview Park in the top flight since 2007 and made a dream start as Andrew Hoey netted from a corner with only two minutes played.

However, this spurred a response from Coleraine who netted twice through Conor McKendry and Andy Mitchell to hold a first half lead.

Loughgall put in a spirited performance after the interval and had two big chances to grab an equaliser as Pablo Andrade and Caolan Loughran both failed to convert - despite Dean Jarvis missing a penalty for the visitors.

"We've all been looking forward to it for quite a while, fans, directors, board," Smith said about Premiership football being played at Lakeview Park.

"It was not the result we were after but I think overall it was a pretty good performance against a good Coleraine team.

"We maybe scored too early!

"It was a great start, we wanted to go at them from the beginning but it's a very good Coleraine team in my eyes.

"I think we struggled to get to grips with the game in the first 45 minutes.

"I think it was a real blow conceding an equaliser so soon after going in front.

"When you go 1-0 up against a team like Coleraine you want to get five or ten minutes to settle yourself

"But a team like Coleraine, they come at you, in waves to be fair, and their equaliser unsteadied the ship a bit for us and it took us a while to get back playing football again.

"I think it was a game of two halves - first half we didn't play to our strengths enough.

"I thought in the second half we really went at them, we took the game to them, I thought we held them back for large parts of the second half.

"Overall, I think a draw would have been a fair result."

The task at hand will be as equally as difficult for Loughgall on Tuesday night as they play host once again as Glentoran visit the Co Armagh village.

"We know it's not going to be easy," Smith stated.

"We know the levels we have to get to.

"We've had a really good pre season, we've worked on our fitness and physicality and I think overall we're in a pretty good position to compete with most teams in this league.

"We look forward to welcoming Glentoran here under the lights with hopefully a full house. We'll give it a go.

"Those are the type of games that we've been striving for, that's why we've worked hard to get in this position where the Glens and Linfield and the bigger teams are coming here regularly.

"We look forward to it, we know it'll be a packed house, we'll have good support ourselves and the Glens will bring big support.

“We’ll be competitive, we'll have a go at Glentoran and we'll give it our best shot.”