On an afternoon when veteran striker Jordan Owens brought the curtain down on a memorable career, the club’s next generation were to the fore as Crusaders saw off Ballymena.
Ballymena passed up a glorious chance to take the lead inside the opening few minutes. Daire O’Connor did brilliantly to evade a number of Crusaders defenders before crossing to the unmarked Success Edogun, who somehow headed wide with the goal at his mercy.
They were made to pay soon after as Finley Thorndike opened the scoring with a fine individual goal, skipping past a number of defenders before beating Declan Breen at his near post with a low drive.
Three minutes later it was 2-0, Thomas Maguire scoring his first goal of season from the penalty spot after he had been upended inside the penalty area.
Things went from bad to worse for the visitors as Joel Thompson inadvertently put the ball in his own net as he struggled to clear after Brendan Hamilton’s spectacular shot crashed off the crossbar to make it 3-0.
Ballymena United came close to pulling a goal back when Jack O’Reilly set up O’Connor, but the winger’s effort rebounded to safety off the base of a post.
The goal they had been threatening arrived just before the break when Edogun made up for his earlier miss with a tap-in from close range after Crusaders failed to deal with a free-kick.
The big striker netted his second of the afternoon 10 minutes after the restart, again capitalising on some poor Crusaders defending to score from six yards out, but that was that for the Braidmen.
