Photo: The UWI’s Rochane Smith holds of the challenge of Boys Town defender Xavian Virgo while his teammate Deno Schaffe drives through midfield. The UWI defeated Boys Town 2-1 to move off the foot of the table of the Red Stripe Premier League.
The University of the West Indies scored only their second ever victory in the Red Stripe Premier League, when they defeated former champions Boys Town 2-1 at the UWI Mona Bowl on Sunday, to move to seven points and off the foot of the table for the first time this season.
First half goals from Girvan Brown and Anthony Greenland, their first for the club respectively, helped the Mona based team carve out a deserved win despite the efforts of Adrian King who got the consolation goal for Boys Town in the second half.
The game got off to a slow start and it took up until the 14th minute for the first shot of the match, a drive from outside the box from Andre Watson that was skillfully turned around the post by Amal Knight for a corner kick.
The UWI team played with great discipline, dropping behind the ball and forcing their opponents to come at them.
Their patience to play without the ball paid off in the 22nd minute when Brown latched on to a ball on the counter attack, near the edge of the box and drove it into the roof of the net to break the deadlock.
The Red Brigade kept pushing but was unable to break down the defensive unit of the UWI, marshaled by the experienced Nicholas McMorris, himself a former Boys Town player. Deno Schaffe, playing in the defensive midfield role, did a very good job on Dawson, preventing him from influencing the game in the attacking third.
The UWI kept looking to hit Boys Town on the counter and Rochane Smith played in Jamie Robinson in behind their opponents defence down the left flank but the winger could only manage to find the side netting, he should have done better.
In time added on at the end of the half, Greenland struck the decisive blow for the UWI team. A good show of strength by his strike partner Brown, allowed the former Cavalier player to bring the ball under control and roll it off into the path of Greenland who did well to get is beyond the dive of Kirk Porter to make it 2-0 at half time.
Boys Town came out in the second half in an aggressive mood and had a number of corners back to back. On one of those occasions a half clearance fell to Daemion Benjamin but his left foot strike from the edge of the area went agonizingly wide of the post.
Boys Town chances of getting back in the game was dealt a severe blow in the 59th minute when a bit of petulance saw young Shamar Nicholson getting a red card for violent conduct after he appeared to head butt the UWI captain, Dravian Williams.
Despite being down to 10 men, Boys Town kept attacking and was finally rewarded in the 75th minute when the industrious Adrian King, who was left unmarked at the far post, fired home from close range to cut the deficit to one.
Boys Town managed to create one more chance in the 90th minute, but Dawson who had been kept quite almost all of the match, rushed his shot from 22 yards when all alone and fired well wide of the target.
The result sees the UWI climb to 11th place while Boys Town slips two places to 12th in the standings.
UWI assistant coach Andrew Peart was happy for the win.
“We are very grateful…three points is always our aim going into the matches. At the end of today’s game Boys Town posed a bit of a challenge…because they were chasing the game so they could commit more men forward.”
Andrew Price was unable to contain his disappointment and believes his team did not dig deep enough on the day.
“We didn’t play with the zest and the energy that we wanted today. UWI wanted it a little bit more than us today. Not giving any excuses but we just didn’t dig deep enough today and if you didn’t dig deep enough you weren’t going to win this game.
“There were a lot of time when we had territorial advantage but we did not turn that to getting into the final third and getting off some shots.”
The final game of match day 7 will be played tonight when Arnett Gardens hosts Tivoli Gardens at the Anthony Spaulding Sports Complex starting at 8:30pm.
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