Baxter ready to roar as a full-time boss

STEPHEN Baxter lifted his third Gibson Cup as Crusaders manager on Saturday but for him the job is just beginning. With the backing of the club, he is taking the bold step of becoming a full-time manager with the aim of continuing his side’s success on the pitch, but helping guide them to even greater things off it.

He is in the process of closing down his sports shop and will make football, something that has dominated his life for decades, his livelihood.

And it is a step that he thinks more and more clubs will take over the next few years as they try to keep nibbling away at title-winning Crusaders’ ankles.

“Linfield were unstoppable from Christmas last year, they went on a phenomenal run, and Coleraine and ourselves have left Linfield, Cliftonville and Glenavon in our wake,” he said.

“That’s the way it should be. There was Belfast domination of this league over the last few years and now you have Coleraine, Glenavon are an excellent team, Linfield and Cliftonville will improve again, Coleraine will kick on again.

“This is the level of the game we now have in Northern Ireland. We have our full-time plans in place for what we want to do next year.

“Michael O’Neill made mention of that in the last year or two on the improvements that have been made.

“And with the work these part-time players have been putting in, it has become like a professional game and that’s why we need to examine that.

“We’ve seen the Dundalk model, the Derry City model, we know the type of thing we’re working towards and I think you’ll see that improvement now in Irish League football.

“I think you’re going to see a lot of teams go in that direction, you’ll see teams maybe like Coleraine and Ballymena putting plastic pitches in to improve the quality.

“You can’t play on mud baths that then turn into rock-hard leg-breakers. If you’re going to raise the standard of the game you’ve got to raise the standard of the football pitches to play on and the facilities.

“Our league is improving ten-fold I think, it really is, and I think that it’s only good for the game that we see Linfield, Coleraine, Cliftonville; and I hope we see a re-emergence of Glentoran and the country teams like Ballymena and Glenavon, and Dungannon have great players too and won a trophy this season.

“That can only be healthy for our game, people put a lot in behind the scenes, more so than we did when we played. We won the league playing here all those years ago for Crusaders and the improvement that has gone on off the pitch is phenomenal.”

It was fitting that the Crues won the Danske Bank Premiership crown after a nail-biting win over Ballymena United at Warden Street.

Baxter knows exactly what the players went through having won the title as a player (left) for the Hatchetmen at the same venue back in 1995.

But the game is vastly changed since then, although Baxter admits that he never expected to still be managing the team all these years later.

“I never set out to do any of this, it’s just a pathway you find your way into somehow, and it’s like a drug, it’s getting more and more and more,” he revealed.

“I’ve now signed this professional deal and I’m closing my business down to try and devel-