Clarendon College will start the quest for a third straight ISSA daCosta Cup title today when they take on Edwin Allen in a Group E game at Jamaica College in Kingston, starting at 12:30pm.
Two games will be played today as Manning Cup champions Jamaica College will face Calabar High in the second game starting at 3:30pm. Today’s games will be the first in almost two years after the onset of COVID-19 pandemic n in March 2020 had seen a raft of restrictions by the government who had put restrictions on movement and gatherings in a bid to mitigate spread.
Clarendon College will seek to maintain their unbeaten run against Edwin Allen despite both teams losing the bulk of their teams from 2019 and the champions say they retained only a few members of their team. Richard Palmer, the manager of the Clarendon College team described his team as “young” saying they retained just two players from the squad that beat Dinthill Technical in the final to win back to back titles after also winning in 2018.
“We retained just two players from 2019 so there are no real expectations this year but we have to play as these boys love to play football and we have to support them,” he said.
Edwin Allen retained seven players from their most recent squad, four from their starting team and coach Tafari Burton said he would rate his chances to get out of the zone at eight out of 10, “as long as the boys listen and follow instructions”.
Their preparation he said was not as good as they had hoped for, “training was staggered due to the pandemic and here we are off to a late start because things were unsure for a long time.”
