Stephen Baxter feels Crusaders were 'worthy winners' in Irish Cup final rout of Ballymena United

Ross Clarke opened the scoring after 12 minutes before a second-half blitz from the Seaview outfit meant they comfortably retained the cup crown they picked up at the same venue against the same opposition 12 months prior.

Adam Lecky, Philip Lowry and Paul Heatley, who produced the highlight with a sweet strike from distance, all got their names on the scoresheet in what was the largest Irish Cup final winning margin since Portadown’s 5-1 success against Larne in 2005.

They dominated from start to finish and after winning last time out while producing what Baxter felt was an under-par performance, world football’s current longest-serving manager didn’t have many complaints this year and believed his men were ‘worthy winners’.

“For the last month we have focused on this game,” he said. “We have sent someone to watch every Ballymena game.

“We’ve watched the tapes and we worked out a strategy of what we wanted to do in this game for quite some time.

“We worked on how we would get this job done.

“I had it in my head for a week, on what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it, but to execute it in the manner we executed it was quite sensational.

“It was 4-0, but we probably missed another four chances, with nothing in reply.

“That’s a big performance in anyone’s book. We didn’t play well last year, but somehow got the cup won.

“I was determined for us to come here, pass the ball well and play well this time. We did that with some aplomb. Our level of performance was really, really scintillating.

“Given we had lost Billy Joe Burns (suspended) and Josh Robinson (injured) and had to play one or two people in different positions...but we worked all of that out.

“To get a compliment form my pal (Ballymena United boss David Jeffrey), who is a legend of our game, he said ‘you were miles ahead of us’ which is quite something.

“It’s always difficult when you are on the losing side, it’s happened to me.

“It was our day, we played really well and we were worthy winners.”