FOLLOWING contrasting semifinal victories over their respective opponents New Campbellville Secondary School (NCSS) and Lodge Secondary School (LSS) will meet in the Georgetown zone final of this year’s Digicel-sponsored nationwide Inter-secondary school football competition at the Police Sports Club ground, Eve Leary, from 1530hrs this afternoon. Their paths to this stage of the tournament were also contrasting ones, for while NCSS defeated North Ruimveldt Multilateral, Ascension Secondary, South Ruimveldt and Guyana Industrial Training Centre (GITC) in their four matches, LSS defeated East Ruimveldt Secondary in their first match.
lost their second game to Carmel Secondary School 2-1, but filed a protest and won same, before going on to defeat Tucville and St George’s respectively. Hence today’s encounter, which, based on the views of both coaches, can be an enthralling and exciting one.
Speaking with Chronicle Sport, LSS’ Leon Bishop said his side has a good chance of taking not only the Georgetown title, but the overall championship trophy.
“We have been training together and this team has been a group for the last two months or so, riding on the confidence of the Under-15 victory in the recently concluded Pepsi/Scotiabank tournament, which served as a confidence-booster for us.
“We have some good players in our team, such as Kareem Johnson and Keith Fletcher, two of the senior members in the squad, along with Sherwin Joseph, Jarrel Thom, Jamal Gibbs, Travis Lyken, Jamal McPherson and the goalkeeper Jamal Daly,” said Bishop.
Asked to express his emotions when told they had won the protest lodged against Carmel, a beaming Bishop said, “I was happy when I heard it. I know we should not have lost that game, but in football things happen like that, but during the game we got word that they played overage players and some of the guys were angry.
“My role as the coach was to calm them down, had them focus more on the game while we did our part in lodging the protest with the relative authorities and as the saying goes, the result is now history and tomorrow (today) we are going to not just win the Georgetown final, but the championship as well.”
While Bishop was beaming with confidence, his opposite number and NCSS coach Lenin Thomas was also confident his team which includes two national players will come out on top over their opponents this afternoon.
“We have been exploiting several different tactics in all our matches to see which one works for us and to date, all have been successful.
“Added to that, the backbone of the team is our two national players Kareem Knights and Shamar Barrow, along with some young players who competed in the Scotiabank/Pepsi Under-15 tournament. So together I am confident we will come out victorious and go on to make our school proud by winning this championship,” stated Thomas.
He looked back at their semifinal victory over GITC and showered praise on his pint-size custodian Amanacke Forde, who came out trumps in the penalty kick shootout to guarantee his team their semifinal spot for today.
“He trains with Georgetown Football Club and when it came down to the shoot-out, he told his players they can bank on him. Added to that, we were working on it at practice and he was always in a confident mode.
“He is very good at it and should tomorrow’s (today) game come down to penalty kicks again, I am backing him and my team to come out on top once again, as I know they can do it and they themselves said to me ‘coach we will go on to win this Digicel football’.”