AFTER losing last time out on Premiership duty, Ruaidhri Higgins hopes Coleraine have a “real refocus” ahead of today’s fixture against Bangor…

The Bannsiders were beaten for the first time in the BOYLE Sports Premiership last Friday night as they went down 3-1 to Linfield at The Showgrounds.

However, they now have a chance to instantly respond at Clandeboye Park this afternoon and Higgins knows his players have what it takes to leave with a positive outcome.

“I know there was plenty made of that Bangor game last year (a 2-1 loss),” he said.

“We went there and won after that, so we’ve recent memories of winning there.

“But we’ll have to go there with a wee bit of steel. It’s 3pm on a Sunday afternoon and if the weather’s dry and the pitch is dry.

“We’re going to have to bounce back from last Friday and I’ve no doubt that we can.

“We’ve been used to winning a lot recently which is great but hopefully that defeat can give us a real refocus to kick on again.”

When asked what he and the players learned from the loss against the Blues, Higgins outlined one specific area that went wrong for his side.

“We reviewed it, the players, and we know exactly where we went wrong,” he said.

“On reflection and when you watch it back it wasn’t anything to do with what I thought it was – duels and second balls and all that

“Actually, statistically, we were very good in that part of the game.

“One of the strongest parts of our game is out bravery in possession but that was lacking last Friday night.

“We couldn’t get any sustained attacks, we kicked the ball back to them far too early and that let us down on the night.

“We couldn’t have any real sustained periods of pressure because of that and it let us down

“Don’t get me wrong if we didn’t have a perfectly good goal isn’t disallowed, we’re going 36 minutes of normal time 2-1 attacking the Railway End.

“It is what it is and we’ll take it on the chin and move on.”