Crusaders Football Club is a professional Northern Irish football club playing in the Irish Premiership, the highest level of the Irish League (NIFL). The club, founded in 1898, is based in north Belfast and plays its home matches at Seaview.
Crusaders originally played as a junior level team until 1931. They then played intermediate level football until 1949, and during that time they were one of the top non-senior teams in the country, winning the Irish Intermediate League nine times and the Steel & Sons Cup on seven occasions. After the withdrawal of Belfast Celtic, Crusaders were elected to the top level in their place, in time for the start of the 1949–50 season. Since then, the club has won 31 senior trophies; seven league titles, six Irish Cups, two League Cups, eight County Antrim Shields, one Setanta Sports Cup, one Charity Shield, two Gold Cups, three Ulster Cups and one Carlsberg Cup.
The club's traditional kit colours are red and black, and the current manager is former player Stephen Baxter, who is now the club's longest serving manager, having been appointed in 2005. The club's closest rivals are Cliftonville, with whom they contest the North Belfast derby. Rivalries also exist with other Belfast sides such as Linfield and Glentoran.
History
Junior years (1898–1921) Crusaders Football Club was formed in the year 1898, although the exact date is unknown. The first meeting of the club is believed to have been held at 182 North Queen Street, Belfast, the home of Thomas Palmer who, along with James McEldowney, John Hume and Thomas Wade, was a member of the original club committee.
Various names were suggested for the club, including 'Rowan Star', 'Cultra United', 'Mervue Wanderers', 'Moyola' (all names of local streets), and others such as 'Queen's Rovers', and the 'Lilliputians'. Thomas Palmer felt a name of more international significance should be adopted and he suggested "Crusaders", after the medieval Christian knights.
Initially, the club was only able to undertake friendly fixtures until it was formally admitted to one of the local junior leagues. Players were compelled to pay a match fee of two pence before they could take the field; a strict "no pay, no play" club policy was enforced. The very first competitive game of which there is any existing written record was on 10 December 1898. It came in the North Belfast Alliance against opponents named Bedford at Alexandra Park and the report states that, "after a splendid game Crusaders won by 5 to 2."
Crusaders went on to compete in the Dunville Alliance, Ormeau Junior Alliance, Alexandra Alliance, Woodvale Alliance and Irish Football Alliance (the latter of which they won three years in a row from 1916 to 1918) until their election to the Irish Intermediate League in 1921.
Intermediate years (1921–1949) The Crues rapidly became one of the top intermediate sides in the country, and won an impressive collection of trophies, including the Intermediate League championship six times in ten years from 1923 to 1933. In addition, the side were very successful in the top junior cup competition, the Steel & Sons Cup, winning the competition on seven occasions as a junior side (the first team would win the same cup again many years later in 2005, after relegation to intermediate football).
The side also reached the Irish Cup semi finals three times in the 1920s. The first came in the 1923–24 season, where they were defeated by that season's Irish League champions Queen's Island in a replay at Pirrie Park. In the 1924–25 season the Crues knocked out senior sides Larne and Belfast Celtic before being halted by Glentoran at The Oval in the semi-finals (who also went on to be champions that year). They reached the semi-finals once again in 1927, losing 2–4 at home to derby rivals Cliftonville. The Crues also reached the final of the Belfast Charities Cup in 1923 (losing to Glentoran), also an impressive achievement as the competition was open to all senior clubs in Belfast and the surrounding area.
Despite these feats, repeated applications for entry to the senior Irish League were turned down. The frustration at the club was such that serious consideration was given to making membership applications either to the Scottish Football League or to the League of Ireland. However, the Second World War intervened and no football at all was played by the Crues between April 1941 and September 1945. Crusaders began competing once more in the Intermediate League after the war, beginning with the 1945–46 season.