It's three but not easy for Jol

"In hindsight, you could say if you score three away from home it's okay," he said after the hard-fought 3-1 victory at Seaview, with the goals coming from Matthew Briggs, Bobby Zamora and a Danny Murphy penalty.

Jol said he knew Crusaders would approach the Europa League second qualifying round tie like a cup final.

"That was always the problem, so you have to motivate yourself and we said before the game they will be battling for the first 60, maybe 70 minutes and then it's probably over," he added.

"They gave us a good game, they've got a direct style with two big strikers so we had to keep concentrating over 90 minutes and that's what we didn't do with the goal."

The Fulham boss said the encounter had been good for his side and expressed hope that the players would wake up unscathed from 90 minutes on the artificial surface.

"It was okay, the only problem was maybe the pitch but everybody will say it was good experience," he added.

Jol said he was also pleased with the form Bobby Zamora was showing ahead of the start of the new Premier League season. "He's a goalscorer, so if he's scoring goals I am happy," he added.

Crusaders manager Stephen Baxter was extremely proud of his team, who scored through Timmy Adamson in the 54th minute.

"We have given an incredible account of ourselves," he said. "You are talking about part-time players, ao the gulf in footballing and financial terms is huge and for us to give a performance like we have and put them on the rack for a little bit, for five minutes, when we might have gone 2-1 up, maybe even 3-1 up, was fantastic."

Baxter said Fulham's class told in the end. He said: "They were fabulous."