Latest news with #Joel Cooper
BBC News
a day ago
- Sport
- BBC News
Higgins pleased with Coleraine's defensive efforts
Coleraine manager Ruaidhri Higgins says he is pleased that his side are limiting their opponents' goalscoring opportunities as the Bannsiders prepare to put their unbeaten start to the season on the line at home to Dungannon Swifts on Tuesday night.A late Joel Cooper goal gave Higgins' team a 1-0 win over Larne in their Premiership opener at Ballycastle Road and his side kept another clean sheet in achieving a 0-0 draw away to Cliftonville on Saturday. "In the two games we've been involved in we've given up very little in terms of chances, which is really, really pleasing," the Coleraine boss told BBC Sport NI."Between both boxes we were excellent [against Cliftonville]. It's not often you see teams coming to Solitude and dominating the ball as much as we did."The disappointing thing for me was our final pass, cross or set-piece delivery wasn't on the money and we know we've got special players who will make that happen. But in terms of our general performance, happy with a lot of it."Coleraine will face a Dungannon team who have had a disappointing start to their campaign - going down 3-0 to Linfield and 4-1 to Portadown."We know that Dungannon are a smashing team, it's only the start of the season, and it will only be a matter of time before they find their feet."They'll be a really good side I've no doubt, I just hope they wait until after Tuesday night!".The former Derry City manager is confident that he has a squad which can make a big impact this term."We know we're going to get better and I'm very confident that we're going to build a really good team here."We're aggressive in how we go after teams. It's not always going to be perfect but we have an approach that we want to take and I think the players have adapted to that really well."
BBC News
10-08-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Coleraine ignoring outside noise
Coleraine forward Joel Cooper said his side will not be distracted by talk from outside the club labelling them as title favourites this who arrived in the summer from Linfield, scored the winner on his Bannsiders debut to help them edge out Larne 1-0 at the Coleraine the 29-year-old said that his side are focused on improving on last season's fifth place finish first before entertaining any talk of them challenging for the Gibson Cup"A lot of it is outside stuff, people want to talk, and other teams want to put us into it [title contention] to take pressure off themselves," he told BBC Sport NI."We're only at the start of where we want to get to so we're focusing on bonding as a group and improving on last year. We finished 30 points behind Linfield last year, so our aim is to get closer."Cooper, who scored 19 goals to help Linfield to the league title last season was delighted to net a late winner for Coleraine after missing a chance minutes before."It's a nice one to win the game. I had a chance before that I should have scored, and I thought that was my moment gone but the pass from Declan [McManus] was quality and I just had to step onto it and hit it, and I was glad it hit the net," he added."To win like that will give us confidence going forward and I think we deserved that win."
