Cavalier hoping for more success after 3-0 win over Vere

Cavalier head coach Rudolph Speid says his team is still in the rebuilding phase after losing 12 players from last season, but that did not stop his young guns from coming away with a workmanlike 3-0 win over Vere United in their Jamaica Premier League encounter at the Wembley Centre of Excellence yesterday.

With the current average age of the Cavalier team being 19 years, the former champions unleashed a number of their youngsters on a more experienced Vere team who had their full complement of players this week following last week’s draw against Tivoli Gardens with only 12 players in the squad.

Heavy showers, which greeted the players at the start of the contest, forced the officials to suspend the game after just 16 minutes, but when the showers passed after 30 minutes, the game continued with Cavalier coming out hot and Vere United seemingly cold.

With the Vere backline slow to come out of their area, Cavalier seized the initiative and pressed and duly got the opening goal in the 42nd minute through Collin Anderson.

Anderson picked up a pass close to the centre circle and outpaced defender Kenroy Lumthen to rifle a shot past the advancing Rojae Williams in the Vere goal.

That would be the only goal of the half, but the second half saw more of the same from the ever-running Cavalier team who doubled their lead in the 68th minute through Dwayne Atkinson.

NIFTY WORK

It was some nifty work down the right side from Anderson that set up the goal as his floated cross inside the area found Atkinson, who headed the ball over substitute Laston Reid and goalkeeper Williams.

The contest was then wrapped up in the 74th minute when Anderson found himself with time and space inside the Vere area, and it was his deflected shot that sent the goalkeeper the wrong way to seal the match 3-0.

Winning coach Speid said he was pleased with the outcome in what is still a trial situation for his young charges.

“I am pretty pleased with the outcome, and I was not expecting such a large margin of victory, but the conditions weren’t the best, so we had to adjust for that. This team is young, and it is going to take some time for them to learn,” said Speid.

After pulling off a heroic performance last week against Tivoli, coach Linval Dixon lamented a poor outing from his team in week two.

“We made some errors and our concentration level was not great. After the rain break, the players just seemed to come out cold, and overall, it was a bad day at the park,” said Dixon.