{"id":505387,"date":"2026-01-10T05:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T05:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/505387\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T05:00:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T05:00:12","slug":"higgins-praises-professional-coleraine-display","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/505387\/","title":{"rendered":"Higgins praises &#8216;professional&#8217; Coleraine display"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Coleraine manager Ruaidhri Higgins says his side &#8220;scored some really good goals&#8221; during their 4-0 Irish Cup fifth round victory over Crusaders at the Coleraine Showgrounds.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>After a goalless first half, Brendan Hamilton was dismissed just after the restart with Mark Connolly breaking the deadlock from the resulting free-kick.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Will Patching, James Akintunde and Joel Cooper then netted to give the home side a comfortable advantage and secure their spot in the sixth round.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It has worked out to be a good night for us,&#8221; Higgins told BBC Sport NI.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We weren&#8217;t brilliant in the first half, but we looked like the team who looked like going in front, so I was happy enough.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The sending off comes at a really good time for us and we scored from the free-kick so, from that moment on, it was going to be tough for Crusaders. We remained professional and scored some really good goals.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>January signings Connolly and Akintunde have made an instant impact since joining the club with both netting on just their second appearance.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>The victory means that the Bannsiders return to winning ways after a disappointing 3-0 loss against Larne in the Irish Premiership last weekend with Higgins adding that the side are improving.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Connolly has got that aggression and desire to win football matches,&#8221; he continued.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are getting closer to what we wanted to look like and what we think will help make this club successful.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Listen, we just keep plugging away and trying to win games of football.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"standard-img\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768021212_609_.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coleraine manager Ruaidhri Higgins says his side &#8220;scored some really good goals&#8221; during their 4-0 Irish Cup fifth&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":505388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[45],"tags":[226398,226399,226395,226396,226397,226400,226394,226393,221,62,67,132,68,226401],"class_list":["post-505387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-brendan-hamilton","tag-coleraine","tag-coleraine-showgrounds","tag-crusaders","tag-james-akintunde","tag-joel-cooper","tag-mark-connolly","tag-ruaidhri-higgins","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-will-patching"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115869045440642626","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}