Stephen Baxter was proud of the performance from his Carrick Rangers and voiced his disappointment that they left The Showgrounds empty-handed.

Here’s what he had to say after the 2-1 loss at Coleraine.

DISAPPOINTED NOT TO TAKE ANY POINTS AWAY FROM THE GAME?

"Yeah, look it was a brilliant performance from us today.

placeholder image — Carrick Rangers manager Stephen Baxter

"We were more than a match for Coleraine and we've certainly done our work and done it extremely well.

"I've just said to the players in there how hard we have pushed this Coleraine team today.

"They're an exceptional team, who are full-time, pass the ball great, get into good positions and we had to deal with all that stuff – but we did it really well."

ALWAYS LOOKED THREATENING ON THE COUNTER ATTACK?

"Yeah, a lot of work has been done hard behind the scenes over the last five, six weeks on the training pitch around what we're trying to do.

"What we're trying to achieve and making sure we're hard to penetrate and also that we're quick on the counter and that's important.

"But you have to play obviously to the strengths of the players that are available to you and we have those capable players who can move forward quickly.

"And we've seen some very good performances today from a number of players and we're still trying to grow that all the time because it's a long season of course and you're going to have lots of ups and downs as we go along the way.

"We had one or two injuries without people like Adam Lecky, Paul Heatley, Seanan Clucas...people like that not available to you is always a stretch.

"But hopefully we'll get all those guys back sooner rather than later.”

BIG CHANCE AT THE END FOR DANIEL GIBSON?

"His touch just took him too far.

"He was moving at such high speed in the way he went round the keeper.

"He was closer to the byline than he was to the goal and he tried to pull it back and it didn't happen.

“In those moments sometimes you need to gain that little bit of luck that you get the time to score the goal.

"It didn't happen but look, as I say, I'll go up the road disappointed we haven't got something but very, very, very pleased how well we've played here today.”