Coleraine’s European involvement ended at Inver Park in Larne on Thursday night when they lost 3-0 – and 8-0 over two legs – to Finnish side HJK Helsinki.<\/p>\n
Trailing 5-0 from the first leg in Finland a week ago, the ‘home’ side harboured ambitions of at least restoring some pride but those hopes were dashed by another clinical display from their visitors.<\/p>\n
A goal up just before the quarter hour mark they doubled their advantage after half an hour and emphasised their superiority when adding a third 10 minutes into the second half.<\/p>\n
Just like seven days ago frailties in defence proved Coleraine’s undoing as Tiovo Mero pounced from close range to open the scoring inside the opening 15 minutes.<\/p>\n
Ruaidhri Higgins’ side was again punished for some sloppy play when the impressive\u00a0Alfie Cicale added to their tally after 33 minutes.<\/p>\n
And Mouhamed Gueye completed the scoring shortly after half-time with a precise side foot finish from the edge of the penalty area which eluded Lewis Webb in the Coleraine goal.<\/p>\n
Despite the scoreline, Coleraine had their chances.<\/p>\n
Joel Cooper saw his snap shot deflected for a corner before firing a left foot shot narrowly over the crossbar inside a couple of first half minutes.<\/p>\n
Then, in the closing stages, the woodwork twice denied the Irish Cup holders.<\/p>\n
First, Ben Wylie’s curling effort crashed off a post before being hacked off the line while Lewis McGregor’s drive from 30 yards glanced the crossbar with the goalkeeper beaten.<\/p>\n
It just wasn’t to be, though, against a team which displayed ruthless efficiency across both legs and who now progress to face SPL club Motherwell in the next round.<\/p>\n
For Coleraine, attention now turns to domestic matters and a visit to Dungannon Swifts on the opening day of the new Sports Direct Premiership next Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coleraine’s European involvement ended at Inver Park in Larne on Thursday night when they lost 3-0 – and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1121123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[49169,5667,2000,299,5187,305396],"class_list":["post-1121122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-c","tag-conference-league","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-hjk-helsinki"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117011892261490223","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1121122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1121123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1121122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1121122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1121122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}