Coleraine manager Ruaidhri Higgins has revealed he would view the Irish League switching to a summer schedule as a “progressive step” for football in Northern Ireland – and feels the much-debated change “would benefit the quality of the league”.

Having enjoyed a spell in charge of Derry City before taking over at Coleraine last year, Higgins has experience of working in both the August to April window currently deployed by the Northern Ireland Football League (NIFL) and the League of Ireland’s February to October campaign.

The Irish League’s calendar is often a topic of discussion with NIFL chief Gerard Lawlor outlining the organisation's aim to “lead and implement a change to the professional game playing calendar” in their 2023-2028 strategy document.

NIFL have been gathering feedback from stakeholders on a potential switch with clubs poised to make a final call – Chair Chris Brindley told the News Letter earlier this year that it was “probably the biggest decision in recent history”.

placeholder image — Coleraine manager Ruaidhri Higgins. (Photo by Desmond Loughery/Pacemaker Press)

Improved European results is often highlighted as one of the potential benefits of making a change as Northern Ireland looks to climb UEFA’s co-efficient table from its current position of 50th – only Luxembourg, Georgia, Montenegro, Wales and San Marino are worse off.

Earlier this month, Linfield were eliminated at the Conference League’s first qualifying round stage by Estonian outfit Nomme Kalju, who were 19 matches through their league campaign, and Glentoran suffered defeat to RFS of Latvia.

Higgins’ Coleraine were beaten 5-0 in their second qualifying round trip to HJK Helsinki last week – the Finnish side have now played 17 league games – with the reverse fixture set for Thursday at Inver Park.

“To take the next step in terms of quality of pitches and European football, then I think it's a progressive step,” said Higgins. “I know people don't like change but my own personal opinion – and I'll always give my own personal opinion – is that I feel it would benefit the quality of the league.

"People don't like change but those in the big positions, obviously they'll make the decisions.

"Gerard and the people there, I don't think they'll shy away from making difficult decisions because at the end of the day no matter what you do you're never going to please everybody.

"There's no doubt about it that when you're in pre-season and you're playing that level of game (against HJK) in pre-season, it's difficult.

"I can see why certain people call for a summer league, I can see the benefits of it.

"We're disappointed with the result, but some of the play...people can look at scorelines, each to their own, the goals were very avoidable but in between that we were happy with some elements of our performance.”