Irish Cup: Stephen Baxter hails talisman Jordan Owens

It may have taken Owens 102 minutes to break the deadlock – but it was certainly worth waiting for.

Having picked up a long punt forward from new boy Reece McGinley, the big striker held off a challenge from Jimmy Callacher before unleashing an unstoppable drive the arrowed into the top corner.

But the drama was far from finished. With the extra-time clock ticking down, Crues midfielder Rory Hale, under no immediate pressure, attempted to find goalkeeper Sean O’Neill with a back pass which was intercepted by Blues new Czech striker Marek Cervenka, whose finish was exquisite.

Once again, a penalty shoot-out appeared to be the most likely outcome.

That was until McGinley whipped over a corner kick from the left, which was flicked on by Jordan Forsythe, for Billy Joe Burns to volley home with practically the last kick of the game.

The victory earned Crusaders a quarter-final outing against Ballymena United or Portadown at the beginning of next month.

“When you have a Jordan Owens in your team, you’ve always got a chance,” beamed Baxter. “His goal was sensational . . . a wonderful strike.

“I thought in extra-time, we were really dealing with the game well . . . we had good game management. It would have been a catastrophe for us to lose that game, given the strong position we put ourselves into

“We hit Linfield hard on the counter-attack, with Reece (McGinley) and Ross (Clarke) causing them problems . . . (David) Cushley was lively. We had a bit of penetration about us, which we hadn’t had in our three previous games against Linfield. We looked really dangerous – it was a good team performance.

“We gifted Linfield a goal to let them back into it. I don’t quite know what Rory (Hale) was thinking off when he tried to play the ball back to Sean (O’Neill) instead of hooking it up the line and gets caught short.

“That would probably have floored most teams, but not us. Even though there was very little time remaining, we still had the character and bottle to go on and win it . . . what a finish from Billy Joe.”

Baxter was missing suspended defensive duo, Kyle Owens and skipper Colin Coates, along with injured striker Paul Heatley, which made the victory even more significant.

“We had quite a few boys sitting in the stand,” he added. “All our centre-backs are hurt at the minute. To make it worse, Howard Beverland had to go to hospital for an x-ray in a foot injury.

“Those things are set to try us. We just had to work it out with the players we had available to us, and I thought we did that. Our defence played really well. I thought Sean Ward was outstanding in three and Billy Joe also performed superbly well.

“We had a good team shape about us. I thought our second half spirit and fight were excellent.”

Linfield boss David Healy believes his boys deserved better.

He said: “It was a tough one to take, especially in the manner how we lost it. We got ourselves back into the game late on, but we then switched off for their corner kick.

“There wasn’t a great deal in it over the 90 minutes, but you expect that against Crusaders

“I’m disappointed because I felt it was a good opportunity for us to progress. The old adage is you are always most vulnerable when you’ve just scored and that turned out to be true.

“Instead of having a little time to settle and perhaps go in and win it, we shot ourselves in the foot and were done with set-play which was unlike us.”

“We were not as good as we’ve been in recent games, credit to Crusaders for going through to the last eight, but they were there to be beaten.

“There wasn’t much in the game – I thought we just edged it, but that’s football. We can reflect on a few chances that we should have done better with.”