Bangor assistant manager John Douglas insists the club are learning lessons about life in the Premiership “every week” after ending their two-month wait for victory with a 1-0 triumph at Dungannon Swifts.

The Seasiders sealed a top-flight return for the first time since 2009 ahead of the current campaign after winning the Championship title and enjoyed a dream start, winning six of their opening 11 league matches.

However, Lee Feeney’s men then won just three of their next 22 and were winless in eight heading into Saturday’s clash at Stangmore Park.

Iestyn Hughes’ early strike proved the difference in Co Tyrone as Bangor collected only a second away clean sheet of the season and first win on the road since beating Glenavon in December.

placeholder image — Bangor’s Iestyn Hughes celebrates his early goal. (Photo by INPHO/Jonathan Porter)

"It's been educational,” said Douglas of their recent run. "It's our first time as managers in the league as well and a lot of the players’ first opportunity in the league – points in this league are really, really hard to come by.

"Unless you're on it from number one to 18 in any given week, you'll struggle because every team in this league is capable of beating each other, which they've showed this year.

"It has been sort of frustrating, obviously, the last eight matches, but we had a really, really good start.

"Behind the scenes, we know there's reasons behind us not probably having a good result in the last eight weeks but we challenged the players today to go out and give a good account of themselves and express themselves.

"Every week (we are learning).

"Honestly, we would talk during the week and how much you're learning every single week and the experience of just managing at this level in this country has taught us a lot.

"Moving forward, it will put our standards in good stead in terms of what we need for the club, what we need for the team and in terms of to improve as well.”

Bangor managed to contain a Swifts side which has secured their second consecutive top-half Premiership finish and hadn’t lost at home to a bottom-six team since mid-September.

"I thought we were super from minute one,” added Douglas. "We've went eight games without a win, and without making excuses, we have had a lot of players injured and been struggling at times.

"At one stage we had four midfielders missing, the next match three defenders missing, then all our keepers injured, so we had tough times.

"We knew coming into the season that we would have that, but today we had a few players back and we can see the squad filling out again and the players, to a man, were absolutely exceptional.

"Even the courage they had in possession of the ball, the football we played at times was really, really good.

"I'm a wee bit frustrated we didn't get the second goal because I think we had the chances to really put it to bed earlier...it left a nail-biting final 10, 15 minutes.”