Stephen Baxter says you have to ‘take your opportunity’ against full-time teams

Stephen Baxter’s Carrick Rangers team pushed Coleraine all the way on Saturday

A lot has been said about the difference in the part-time and full-time teams in the Irish League this season.

Some have claimed there is a big gap between the sides, which they feel is only going to get bigger.

For Stephen Baxter the gap isn’t as big as some make out as his Carrick Rangers side pushed Coleraine all the way on Saturday and were unlucky to come away without anything to show for their efforts as they slipped to a 2-1 defeat.

“The full-time teams are obviously better, they’re better players and they’re better set up with the facilities and with the full-time training etc,” he said.

“They’re in every day so they’ve time to work on things. So you would expect them to be the best but I don’t think the gulf is ginormous.

“But you know on any given day you have an opportunity and you’ve got to try and take it.

“A lot of hard work has been done behind the scenes over the last five or six weeks on the training pitch around what we’re trying to do and what we’re trying to achieve.

“Making sure we’re hard to penetrate and also that we’re quick on the counter and that’s important.

“You obviously have to play to the strengths of the players that are available to you and we have those capable players who can move forward quickly.

“We’ve seen some very good performances today from a number of players and we’re still trying to grow that all the time.

“We were more than a match for Coleraine and we’ve certainly done our work and done it extremely well.

“I said to the players how hard we pushed this Coleraine team. They’re an exceptional team, who are full-time, pass the ball great, get into good positions and we had to deal with all that stuff. But we did it really well.

“We shut all our passing lanes down and worked incredibly hard and we had two or three brilliant chances of our own.

“You’ve got to keep playing the best you can and we’ll just take every game as they come you know I’m not getting too far ahead of it.

“It’s a long season of course and you’re going to have lots of ups and downs as we go along the way and one or two injuries without people like Adam Lecky, Paul Heatley, Seanan Clucas.

“People like that not available to you is always a stretch, but hopefully we’ll get all those guys back sooner rather than later.”