St George’s ease to 8-0 win over Meadowbrook

Five days after items were stolen from their dressing room at Sabina Park, St George’s College assistant coach Marcel Gayle said that the assistance in getting their valuables replaced helped to ease the minds of his players en route to a dominating 8-0 victory over Meadowbrook in their ISSA/Digicel Manning Cup Group A game at the Constant Spring playing field yesterday.

St George’s captain Brian Burkett led the scoring onslaught with a hat-trick in the 17th, 45th, and 71st minutes while tallies from Adrian Reid (44th minute), Joshua Jackson (33rd minute), Raheem McIntosh (59th minute), Tae-Sean Oneil (69th minute), and Ranza Toomer (90th minute) helped to continue their winning start to the competition.

For Gayle it was a comfortable result and a morale-boosting one after cell phones and other valuables went missing from their dressing room on Saturday during their 6-0 win over Ardenne at Sabina Park. Gayle said that getting the phones replaced allowed their minds to be put at ease, with their focus solely on continuing their unbeaten start to the season.

“Kudos to FLOW and Digicel. They replaced some of the items that were missing. They really came through for the boys, and I think that motivated them to get back on a level playing field,” Gayle said. “These are young boys. They are the future, and if you rob the future, you are going to rob what’s in store for them.”

A glimpse of the future was presented with an offensive display which saw them take a 4-0 lead at halftime and proceed to systematically break down Meadowbrook.

With 14 goals scored from their first two games, Gayle said that getting back-to-back clean sheets was more important and puts them in a better position compared to last season.

“I thought the guys stuck to the task. We took a little while to settle down, but once we got ourselves together, I thought we (played) well and hence the result. It’s good to have so many goals this early in the season. But what is important for us is that we don’t concede any goals. That for us is key,” Gayle said.

Meadowbrook assistant coach Matthew Cardoza was displeased with the poor passing of his team with the work during preseason not manifesting itself.

“We just played useless long balls. We are not executing what we have been practising for the past eight weeks. Our possession play was terrible. But what we are going to do is ensure that we polish off our technique to make sure we can execute how we want to,” Cardoza said.

daniel.wheeler@gleanerjm.com

Yesterday’s results Waterford 1 Calabar 1

Ardenne High 0 Kingston College 2

Campion College 0 Jose Marti 0

Excelsior 6 Cumberland 0

Clan Carthy 1 Kingston Technical 2

Haille Selassie 2 Vauxhall 1

Charlie Smith 1 Bridgeport 0

Today’s games

Group B

St Catherine High vs Jamaica College

St Mary’s College vs St Jago High

Cedar Grove vs Holy Trinity

Group C

Camperdown vs Papine High

Hydel High vs Mona High

Kingston High vs Wolmer’s Boys

All games kick off at 3:30 p.m.