Photo: Joel Cunningham, the second goal scorer for Wolmers, hurdles a tackle in the game against Clan Carthy. Wolmers won the game 3-0.
Playing without one of Jamaica’s most talented schoolboy athletes, Jaheel Hyde, Wolmers Boys began the quest for the elusive Manning Cup title with a comfortable 3-0 win over Clan Carthy High in their Group E encounter at the Alpha Boys Home field yesterday.
The two time defending champions of the Walker Cup Knock Out competition has been the subject of many jokes at the press conferences leading up to the start of the ISSA/LIME Schoolboy football season due to their recent “near misses” but are determined to set things right this year.
The Maroon and Gold clad team got off to the perfect start when Shaquille McKoy took advantage of sloppy defending on the part of Clan Carthy to slam home with less than a minute on the clock. Clan Carthy coach Nallawe Blake must have feared the worst when his team fell 2-0 behind in the 13th minute. Joel Cunningham latched onto a ball on the left side and easily disposed of a defender before slamming into the roof of the net at the near post.
Fifteen minutes later Khori Bennett got the goal of the game when his fierce drive, from almost 30 yards, flew past the despairing dive of the Clan Carthy goalkeeper to nestle into the corner of the net.
Wolmers continued to control the first half as Demar Rose pulled the strings in midfield. They were unable to make their territorial advantage count and failed to add to their goals tally.
The Clan Carthy team came out in the second half determined not to be overrun on their home ground and defended stoutly to deny Wolmers any further goals. The boys from Heroes Circle will be cursing their luck however as they missed a number of easy chances and hit the woodwork on more than one occasion.
Winning coach Ludlow Bernard was happy to start with a win but admitted that his team had a lot of work to do.
“It was a disappointing scoreline. I am satisfied with the amount of possession we had, but we were too straight forward and became too predictable. Especially when we realized that they were going to camp out just outside their box, we needed to be more creative.
“I am not satisfied with our aggression around the goal area,” he concluded.
Blake was happy for the second half display by his team while lamenting the loss of key players just before the start of the season.
“We lost two of our main outfield players to another school three days before the start of the competition, one of whom is a national player and our regular goalkeeper left a few days ago. Our goalkeeper had only three days of training.
“But I am happy with our second half performance. We gave up soft goals in the first half because people failed to follow instructions but we did well in the second half to keep them scoreless.”
In other games played, Norman Manley clipped Kingston Technical 1-0, St. Georges College had a similar result away to Waterford and so did Jose Marti at Campion College. Spanish Town blanked Trench Town 2-0, Jonathan Grant edged St. Andrew Technical 2-1 and Haile Selassie outscored Greater Portmore 3-2.
The game between Camperdown and Papine was not played due to an under-prepared field.
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