Coleraine manager Ruaidhri Higgins insists Ryan Schofield’s decisive penalty save in their 5-1 Premiership victory over Crusaders showed “why we brought him here”.

The Crues, who lost out 4-0 eight days prior at the same venue in the Irish Cup fifth round, took a lead into half-time as Fraser Bryden scored his 16th league goal of the season.

However, the Bannsiders roared out of the traps after the break with Joel Cooper equalising mere moments into the second half.

Declan Caddell’s side had an opportunity to restore their lead from the penalty spot, but Schofield denied Bryden before a further two Cooper goals and strikes from Mark Connolly and Matthew Shevlin resulted in Coleraine ultimately easing to victory.

placeholder image — Joel Cooper scored a hat-trick in Coleraine's win over Crusaders. (Photo by Desmond Loughery/Pacemaker Press)

Former Huddersfield Town shot-stopper Schofield joined Coleraine during the summer but missed the start of this season due to a shoulder injury with Newcastle United loanee Aidan Harris taking over number one duties.

Schofield, who has also been on the books of Portsmouth and Morecambe, was making only his fourth Premiership appearance of the season on Saturday and Higgins believes there’s even more to come from the 26-year-old.

"It’s (penalty save) a huge moment in the game,” Higgins told the club’s media channel. “We equalise and then straight away they go down the other end of the pitch and get a penalty.

"It could flip the game on the head again, but he produces a big moment and that’s why he’s at the club, that’s why we brought him here, because that’s what he’s capable of.

"He got a really unfortunate injury in pre-season but I feel now we’ll see the best of him and I thought he was a really good performer today, as were others.”

Coleraine sit eight points adrift of leaders Larne, who drew 0-0 with Linfield on Friday evening, and are two better off than Glentoran – Declan Devine’s men have played two games fewer.

Having lost three of their last four league matches prior to the weekend, Higgins feels a much-improved second half showing lay the platform for success.

"I’m delighted with the result,” he added. “Although we did create some good opportunities in the first half, we didn’t play anywhere near the levels we expect.

"We gave up two or three big chances which we shouldn’t do. We lacked doing the basics of the game really well and it cost us for the first goal.

"We grew into the first half, got better as it went on, but we had to inject more speed into our play. We played much more like I want us to in the second half and we got some brilliant goals.

"Sometimes you don’t have to tell the players...we weren’t playing at the tempo we needed to play at, we needed to speed our game up, be braver and cause them more issues in certain parts of the pitch.

"We did it so much better in the second half. We played with real courage and there was some really outstanding individual performances as well.”