WHAT THE MANAGER SAID: Stephen Baxter says Carrick Rangers won't get carried away by storming comeback against Crusaders

Here’s what he had to say after watching his team make it an opening day to remember in north Belfast.

EVER BEEN INVOLVED IN A SIMILAR GAME?

"Yes, as I said on the bench when we went 3-0 down.

"I said this reminds me of the Cliftonville 3-0 up here and we came back to win 4-3 in a similar manner in the last kick.

"Nothing more than we deserved here today because we worked incredibly hard in the second half.

"We were the team in the ascendancy and we got into the right areas to score the goals.

"Then we had to put our head a few balls in the last two or three minutes to see it out.

"It was a good comeback from us, a never-say-die attitude.

"We worked hard at what we were trying to achieve. Obviously we had to deal with being 3-0 down in areas that I felt we made two horrid mistakes.

"People not being picked up and not being tight to people in certain areas. As a team, not just as individuals, we corrected that a little bit in the half-time..and it paid dividends for us in the second half.”

WHAT WERE YOU THINKING AT 3-0 DOWN?

"I promise you...when any team is playing their football and doing their thing and they score a goal against you, as a manager you're going, they've worked their ball well and they scored a goal.

"When I was manager here, we beat Carrick Rangers on one of the evenings, 9-0 here.

"If you get a team on the run and you're passing the ball well and you're opening a team up well, that can happen.

"It was a tremendous victory that night. By the same token, all you can do in that moment is to try and tighten your shape and work your way back into the game.

"We had a lot of time on our hands…if we were conceding a third goal at 75 minutes, the game's gone.

"When you're 30 minutes and you're 3-0 down, you've still got time to fix it.”

MANNER OF THE VICTORY MAKE IT EVEN MORE SPECIAL?

"No, there's no real thing.

"We came back from a big scoreline but this is a team that has just really started to meet each other, play with each other and gel.

"They've only been in six weeks now. Matthew Snoddy arrived yesterday at 11.30pm. He's met his players for the first time, hasn't trained with them.

"There's a lot of stuff that goes on in the training park. You're trying to build relationships, you're trying to cement stuff that you want to work on as a team. That takes time.

“We just need to make sure that we keep working hard at what we do. We're not going to be carried away by anything. We've just got to keep playing and keep doing our best.”