BY SHERDON COWAN
Monday, December 15, 2014
BARBICAN Football Club’s unprecedented triple-crown defence in the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) Sherwin Williams Women’s Premier League has been hailed as one of the greatest of its kind by coach Charles Edwards.
The high-riding team rewrote the history books on Saturday when they defeated first-time finalists Arnett Gardens 3-0 at Drewsland Mini-stadium. The goals came courtesy of Davia Smith in the 50th minute, Annakay Richards’ 78th minute own goal and captain Alicia James in the 87th minute.
With the win, Barbican moved their overall tally to 21 titles, and the latest is their seventh consecutive league win.
A very pleased Edwards recalled some of the struggles his team had to withstand in order to remain unbeaten triple-crown winners for three years successively.
“We started out with a lot of problems; we couldn’t train at the field because it was being refurbished for premier league’s men and we ended up training at JC (Jamaica College) behind a goal area for most of the season,” he told reporters.
He continued: “It was very tedious (as) the surface was course, but I am happy JC allowed us to train there. We had to tailor our training sessions [and] we had to do a lot of little things different, but at the end of the day these girls are true champions.
“They are a calibre above most of the other teams because they stuck with it. We had a lot of injuries from the surface and we weren’t as fit as we usually are… this is one of the best seasons of football coaching for me ever in my life,” he said.
The fair-sized crowd turned up expecting a thriller, but the encounter was nowhere close to a spectacle. The first-half was the closest it went to being competitive as Arnett Gardens started out very promisingly.
The ‘Junglists’ gave as well as they got, and did manage to force Barbican on the back foot on a number of occasions. But when the daylight faded, the champions came alive and stole the ascendancy late in the half.
However, they went to the break goal-less after a glancing header from Tashana Vincent came back off the crossbar and was scrambled clear by Arnett Gardens.
Any chance of an Arnett Gardens victory went up in smoke five-minutes after the resumption, as poor defending allowed an unmarked Smith to neatly head home a well-taken free kick by James.
From then, Barbican went at their opponents rapidly, but Arnett responded efficiently enough to withstand the onslaught.
The introduction o f Trudian Mills injected more tempo to the attacking prowess of Barbican. The diminutive player went straight to work as she used her speed and dexterity to telling effect and maintained the intensity on the right side of the park.
The slippery player picked up a rebound at the top of the18-yard box, but failed to make amends as her crunching right-footed shot rattled the crossbar.
A second goal was inevitable and it came via the own-goal route when the hapless Annakay Richards misjudged an attempted cross by Vincent and fell to the ground in despair as the ball raced into the back of her own net.
And Arnett Gardens’ dream of a fairy tale end to the season was over when goalkeeper Kadiann Edwards allowed the ball to burst through her grasp from James’ left-footed free kick from about 25 yards. The shot lacked pace, but still it proved too much for the hapless ‘keeper.
Meanwhile, Edwards said his team did their pre-game assessment and stuck to the game plan.
“Arnett Gardens is never a fit team and they talked a lot throughout the week, so we sat back and we watched them. We knew what they were coming with and we knew how to play them.
“They were trying to talk their way through it, and we decided that this evening (Saturday), during the ninety-minute period is when we would have fired our shots, and we had three. It was a fabulous game and we won and I am happy for that,” he pointed out.
Meanwhile, Arnett coach Jerome Waite hailed his team’s gutsy performance.
“We were up against the number one team, we had played them twice, and they played with more purpose. Our girls are a young bunch and this is also a good experience for them and you still have to commend them for the fact that they have reached the major final. So overall, we still have to give them credit,” he told the Jamaica Observer.
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Another triple for Barbican
