It’s time to look forward says Coleraine boss Oran Kearney

The Bannsiders were tipped for another title charge this term after an impressive season last time out and a superb European run during the summer.

Injuries and suspensions though have made it a stop-start beginning to the new campaign for Kearney’s men.

Defeat at home to Larne last Saturday made it three defeats on the bounce for Coleraine for the first time in four years.

There is light at the end of the tunnel though with players returning to action again, and Kearney says the Bannsiders have to look forward now starting with tonight’s game at Dungannon Swifts.

“It’s a different challenge but you’ve to meet it head on,” he said.

“My biggest anxiety coming into the season was that I had too many defenders and thinking how am I going to keep everybody happy.

“For most of this season we’ve had two fit defenders!

“That’s football and that’s the way that it works. For us, now, the key thing is to look ahead. What’s done is done.

“We’re seven games into a 38 game season.

“There’s a huge amount of points up for play.

“It’s up to us now to dust ourselves down and go and grab them.”

Coleraine are 13 points off league leaders Larne, but despite having a lot of catching up to do Kearney feels his side aren’t out of it yet.

“I think this year is going to be like no other particularly in what lies ahead in January, February and March time with the number of games that will have to be played, midweek games and everything that goes with it,”he said.

“Do I feel that we’re out of it? No. Do I feel we’ve a lot of work to do? Yes.

“Are we even talking about being involved in anything at the minute? No. But we’ve a massive month ahead of us.

“We’ve got to claw and scrape and claw and scrape and do whatever it takes to hang on to the coat-tails and try to remain on the periphery

That’s the big job moving forward and that starts on Friday night.”

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