On the occasion of Stephen Baxter’s testimonial dinner it is important that we all remember the position that Crusaders FC were in back in 2005. Stephen, or “Big Stanley” as the fans affectionately know him, was a hero for Crusaders as a player. He won League medals in the 90’s and famously saved the club from dropping to intermediate football in May 2001 with a hat-trick against Distillery in a League relegation play off.
There can be little doubt that the catalyst and chief motivator for all improvements at Crusaders FC over the past two decades, on and off the field, has been Stephen Baxter himself.
Back in February 2005, Stephen Baxter came back to a bedraggled Seaview as the new manager, promising to ‘walk over hot coals’ to lift the club out of the mire and he certainly did that and much much more!! Trying to do justice to Stephen’s tenure in a few hundred words will never do justice to the sterling job he has done.
Stephen’s first managerial priority was just to lift the mood, blow away the pallor. There was barely a few footballs for players to train with and Stephen put his hand in his own pocket and brought a bag of balls, cones, bibs and other gear to get the training rolling. It wouldn’t be the last time the big man was out of pocket for the club. “Austerity” would come to characterise the first decade of his career as manager.
Given just a few weeks of the 2004-05 season, the best Stephen could do was to instill a bit of belief. “Keep the Faith” became the motto of the Baxter era. We got off the bottom of the League but not out of the relegation zone, reached a County Antrim final (which we could have won but lost in extra time 2-1 to Linfield) and finished the season on a dank, depressing night at Seaview losing the 2nd leg relegation play-off to Glenavon. Everything about Seaview that night felt like decay and decline.
Stephen quickly prepared to bounce back the next season, building with a core of young players that would be the backbone of his first decade in charge. Chris Morrow, David Magowan, Colin Coates & Stephen McBride along with the inspirational signing in Davy Rainey showing the first glimpse of his persuasion skills and an adroitness at the ‘budget’ end of the transfer market. Lidl rather than Sainsbury’s, as Stephen himself said.
A Steel & Sons Cup victory over Dundela at a packed Seaview on Christmas Eve 2005 had Crues fans believing again. The Crues bounced straight back to the top division, captained by stalwart Jeff Spiers, with a single loss to Dundela on a horrible day at the ‘Hen Run’ the only set-back to interrupt our progress.
The 2006-07 season saw the team compete well, finishing in the top half after a blistering start and, incrementally, year on year, bit-by-bit, Stephen improved the playing squad.
Two 2nd place finishes in 2011 and 2014, two 3rd place finishes in 2009 and 2013; four League cup finals, winning in 2012 against Coleraine; an Irish Cup win in 2009, two losing Irish Cup finals in 2011 and 2012. That brought four European qualifications in the five years and that magnificent All-Ireland Setanta trophy success in 2012. At the end of his first decade, it was success on a scale unimaginable in February 2005.
Across these years Stephen often worked on “thin rations”. He has worked with the Board and within the resources available but has also and rightly challenged them to match his ambition. He pushed, cajoled, encouraged and motivated everyone at the club to go a little bit further, to do a little bit more. Bit by bit, success on the field combined with work off the field to reduce the club’s debt mountain, with purse strings eventually loosened to improve the squad.
The golden rule to footballing success is player budget size. Not transfer fees or any other factor, but the size of the player wage-bill. That’s why Manchester City usually win the English Premiership and why, since Crusaders’ last title win in 2018, only Linfield and Larne have won the Gibson Cup locally. From time to time there’s an exception like Leicester City winning the Premiership. The astonishing achievement of the Baxter era was – for me – Crusaders winning the League in 2014-15 with a player budget south of £200,000. At that time, I doubt if that had been done in the preceeding 25 years or more. And I don’t think it could happen again in the ‘investment’ (or ‘sugar-daddy’) era of today’s league.
Every penny a prisoner, Stephen has been able to build strong competitive squads – each year better than the last. Young players who have come through the Crusaders youth ranks include ex captain Colin Coates, Chris Morrow, Jordan Owens, Declan Caddell and a bit later the talented Gavin Whyte. Davy Magowan and Stephen ‘Steeky’ McBride who were stalwards from the early Baxter days. Experienced signings at key times have been effective, such as Gary Smyth, who treasured a Cup Final win in 2009, Michael Collins, who picked up a County Antrim Shield medal in 2010 and Paul Leeman, an outstanding performer in the 2012 League cup win against Coleraine.
Clever snips such as Martin Donnelly, Stuart Dallas, Craig McLean and Jordan Forsythe made a difference too. Paul Heatley, a ridiculously low-fee transferee from Carrick Rangers, became a club legend and one of the all-time club greats. The Baxter era has hardly been a time of big money transfers. Until the League-winning days, only Tim Adamson and Sean O’Neill required significant fees – both more than proving their mettles in subsequent years.
Eventually, the tide turned. Ex Linfield and Ballymena manager, David Jeffrey (who enjoyed countless ‘jousts’ with Big Stan as a player and manager) got it ‘spot on’ in his own Sunday Life column on 13th September 2015. He wrote
“There was a period during my reign as Linfield boss when the Blues ruled the roost at Seaview. We simply dominated Crusaders and gave them no mercy. Towards the end of my tenure the Crues, under Stephen Baxter, started to pursue a more physical game to complement the talented football they used to play. They bullied us, had the physical edge and I often wondered if my team were defeated before they actually went onto the pitch. This trend seems to have continued into Warren Feeney’s era as Linfield manager.”
Another portent that change was in the wind was the signing of Billy Joe (BJ) Burns, formerly of Linfield who had signed for Crusaders at the start of the 2014-15 season. Usually Linfield players come to Crusaders towards the end of their careers, when no contract was on offer from the Windsor hierarchy. However BJ Burns, at 25, was in his prime and chose to come to Seaview. ‘BJ’ was perhaps the signing that pushed Crusaders over the line from contenders to champions.
Two others stick in my mind, for different reasons. First there was Eamon Doherty coming from Derry City via Limavady United. Eamon played 113 matches between 2007-10 and was just the sort of character and leader that Stephen has an eye for. A midfield organiser a leader of men Doherty quietly made the difference in a team moving from just ‘decent’ towards being contenders. The arrival of Barry Molloy reminds of the Doherty signing. Just a great leader who does simple things well and makes the right on-field decisions instinctively. Another that sticks in my mind was Stephen Coulter. Stephen came to the Crues from Loughgall in 2007 with a goal-scoring reputation but took time to settle. Probably unlikely to be hailed in the pantheon of Crusaders greats, Coulter nonetheless was an improvement on the year before. At the end of two seasons he had earned the respect of Crusaders fans for his dogged, non-stop, hard work and persistence. Coulter went back to Loughgall in 2009 with a smile on his face and an Irish Cup medal round his neck. A key cog in the cup-winning team of 2009.
My personal memory from the Baxter ‘first decade’ era was the Setanta Cup semi final at Seaview when Davy Rainey fired us into a 2-0 first leg victory in front of a sparse Seaview attendance. It wasn’t the goals I remembered, however. It was as treasurer of the club at that stage andI got into conversation with our counterparts in the Sligo Board over a half time cup of tea. Comparing notes I discovered that Sligo’s playing budget was in excess of six times larger than ours. That Sligo outfit was a magnificent team, and it is a measure of Stephen Baxter’s era that Crusaders survived the return leg at Sligo and went on to win an All-Ireland title!!! Only the 2nd Northern Irish club ever to do so. Silk purses and sows ears?
So, how to sum up the Baxter era? Since 2009, Crusaders have qualified for European competition in thirteen of those years. Who’ll forget the tussle against the Premiership’s Fulham to baptise the new Seaview stands in 2011. There were trips to Skopje, Basle, Ludogorets and Trondheim, where Sean O’Neill’s goalkeeping heroics and Jordan Owens’ sensational goals caught the eye. The sheer heat underfoot in Gibraltar, the thick fog of the Faroe islands. Another “first” was Crusaders winning a first ever European tie, against Ekransas from Lithuania, paving the way to a trip to IF Brommapojkarna and the 30,000 state-of-the-art Tele-2 Arena in Stockholm .Or those who watched a brave performance at a 40,000 packed Molineux stadium in 2019, when Jarlath O’Rourke bottled-up Adama Traore. Or the unforgettable return leg at Seaview when Heats’ opener had us dreaming for a minute or two or beating Finland’s FC Haka and battling across two legs and extra-time to push Norway’s giants Rosenberg to the edge.
I’m sure there were those who saw Crusaders play in these magnificent theatres who took a second to think back over the years – huddled in the wind and driving rain in the wee sheds at Dundela’s Hen-Run watching us lose 2-0 in 2005!
That’s one way of looking at the journey travelled! Great, great nights.
On reaching the top, winning three League titles between 2014 and 2018 (yes, it should have been four from four) the Baxter revolution faced a new foe – new riches in the League. Despite our best efforts, the “investments” into Larne FC and Glentoran FC, married to the ongoing in-built advantages bestowed on Linfield FC, the hill to climb turned into a veritable mountain. By his final season in charge the Crusaders team budget – though higher than at any stage in our history – paled into insignificance compared with the “top 3” big-spenders. We weren’t half-way to Larne and Linfield’s riches, with Glentoran further in front. These ‘investments’ won’t last. Clubs like Larne and Glentoran have live far beyond their earned means in recent years. Larne’s accounts record a £2.1 million loss in 2023! The plain fact is that, for Stephen and Crusaders, the financial gap became unbridgeable.
Even then, faced with clubs on ‘economic steroids’, the period 2018-23 brought four European qualifications and three Irish Cup wins from five seasons! Against the tide, Stephen Baxter has an unrivalled record.
In this period, 2018-23, the club professionalised. Some grand signings were made. Not all of them worked. In the modern era, a football manager has to be more than a tactician, a motivator, a football maestro or a financial juggler he has to be a psychologist, a social worker and more. No easy thing in an age of Millennials and Gen Z’s. And then we has the covid pandemic. An income-free period and major financial challenge from which the club is only just recovering..
At the end, a fantastic run-in in 2024 and an ‘edge of seats’ victory over Coleraine in the play-off final brought the curtain down on the Baxter-era with yet another European qualification.
In the coming years, new facilities will complete the Seaview stadium as one of the best small stadia in the country. A new South Stand, a new educational suite and Skills Centre for a burgeoning Apprenticeship programme, a striking front-of-road entrance feature building and a new community training complex half a mile away at Loughshore. All of these will be built on the back of the Baxter years. None of it, in all truth, could have happened without Stephen’s leadership.
Sometimes it needs the distance of some years to assess a player or a manager’s contribution. In this case, not so. It is a matter of plain fact that Stephen Baxter stands alone as Crusaders FC’s best and most successful manager. Stephen would be first to share the praise with his loyal, tight knit, management teams over his tenure, but I can only say “Chapeau” to Stephen for his passion, leadership, and dedication to the task.
And, like Othello, Stephen could rightly say “I have done the state some service, and they know’t.”
An exhilarating two decades. And no easy act to follow. Whatever follows, keep the faith, big man – and don’t be a stranger.