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Crusaders boss Stephen Baxter praised his side for their second-half performance after they’d been reduced to 10-men during a 1-1 draw with Glentoran at Seaview – and feels the visitors should also have had a player dismissed.

Jay Donnelly struck in the 35th minute to give the Glens a lead but Philip Lowry produced a fine finish after superb hold-up play from Adam Lecky on the stroke of half-time to send the two sides into the break all square.

Shortly after the restart, Crues defender Josh Robinson was shown a straight red card for dragging down Donnelly with the forward attempting to run through on goal, but Baxter was delighted with the response from his men and they were denied a second when Aaron McCarey saved Ben Kennedy’s 68th minute penalty.

While having no complaints about Robinson’s dismissal, Baxter feels Glentoran centre-back Aidan Wilson, who was adjudged to have handled the ball for Kennedy’s spot-kick, deserved to be given his marching orders for a tackle on Lowry minutes into the second-half.

"Whilst there's no doubt ours is a sending off, I can assure you that Aidan Wilson's tackle on Philip Lowry is a leg-breaking tackle,” he told the club’s media channel. “It was late, right beside me and it's a red card all day by a million miles.

"Raymond Crangle (fourth official) and the linesman are standing beside it and the referee has to do what is the right thing to do and he doesn't do it.

"That's the disappointing part of the game and then a minute later we're served a red card.

"I can only ever ask our team to give their lot in the 90 minutes.

"How officials come and referee our football matches is up to them.

"It's a difficult job at times - I've no problem with that - but in these really big games you have to get the key decisions right and you have to manage the game really, really well because it can swing on the finest of margins.

"If they go against you it can be a very hard thing to take."

Baxter also felt his side finished the strongest despite Glentoran’s man advantage.

"We looked like we had the extra man,” he added. “We were coming down the left, the right and there wasn't a Glentoran player within 10 yards of us.

"We had all the time to play and get into good areas to really trouble their back three.

"That will be the pleasing aspect of our day with how well we played in the second-half.

"We will feel really gutted that we haven't gone away with all three points."

Stephen Baxter feels Glentoran should have had player sent off for "leg-breaking" challenge in draw with Crusaders