All photographs on this page are © by Drew McWilliams, permission granted to glenavonfc.com

Glenavon played a lot of excellent football in this game despite Colin Malone having to field a makeshift team due to the mounting injury list. Marty Hunter returned to the side and did well at the centre of the defence in place of Atiba Charles with Gavin McDonnell continuing in the other central defender role at which he proved excellent once again. Neil Gawley had recovered sufficiently from his knee injury to play 65 minutes and he almost opened the scoring in the 42nd minute when he turned Jeff Spiers in the box and forced a great save from Armstrong after McConnell had flicked on Hawthorne's cross. Earlier Hawthorne had a left foot shot from the 18 yard line that Armstrong saved comfortably. There were few efforts on target in the first half with Morrow firing just wide for the Crues in the 18th minute and Rice saving easily from Crawford's 43rd minute ground shot.

Nathan McConnell had the ball in the net in the 67th minute with a tap in from 6 yards after Neil Armstrong could only parry Adrian Harper's stinging left foot volley but his celebrations were cut short by the assistant referee's flag. The same official, Mr Shanks, was guilty of the most absurd offside decision a little later when he flagged Paul Walsh off when he must have been a good 5 yards onside.

Despite enjoying the majority of the possession, Glenavon still badly miss a second striker to play alongside McConnell who worked really hard throughout with little reward. The thinness of Glenavon's squad was illustrated by the fact that the substitutes' bench tonight consisted of two 18 year olds and a 16 year old!

Larmour failed to get a decisive touch at the back post to Morrow's 72nd minute cross-shot and Conor Walsh was unlucky six minutes later when he turned onto his left and curled a super shot that seemed to just clip the outside of Armstrong's left hand post with the Crues keeper looking worried.

The winning goal, which sees Crusaders move top of the League, came just nine minutes from the end when, ironically, Glenavon had an opportunity to break but Paul Walsh gave the ball away in midfield. Jeff Spiers found Chris Morrow on the edge of the penalty-area, the midfielder exchanged passes with David Larmour and drilled the ball past Paul Rice with his right foot.

With other results on the night not favouring Glenavon, the evening's proceedings dropped the Lurgan Blues to 12th place in the table.