Spiers (left) receives his award from Guinness' Terry Loughins

Crusaders' superb run to the CIS League Cup semi-finals has helped earn the evergreen Jeff Spiers the Guinness player of the month award for September.

The Crues secured fine cup wins over Coleraine and Limavady to qualify for a quarter-final meeting against Linfield.

The north Belfast outfit were definite underdogs against the Blues but after scoring an early goal through Brian Russell, Spiers and his defensive collleagues kept Linfield at bay to go through to a semi-final meeting with Premier Division leaders Cliftonville.

Now 36-year-old Spiers aims to help the Crues transfer that cup form into championship points.

"The last three or four seasons have seen us struggle near the bottom of the table," said Spiers, twice a Guinness award winner with Linfield.

"We want to do better than that in the new 16-team format.

"The semi-final against Cliftonville should be quite a derby battle as Marty Tabb seems to have them going well at the moment".

Crusaders' semi-final against Cliftonville will take place on Wednesday 15 October at the Oval (1945 BST).