A last gasp goal from Joseph Wilkes sealed a dramatic 1-0 victory for Rams Village Superstars over S-Krave Newtown United on Saturday, May 22, 2021, in the SKNFA Premier League at Warner Park. The match seemed poised to end 0-0, as both teams battled but failed to find the back of the net. But when a ball was booted into the 18-yard box late on, and Newtown defenders failed to clear their lines, Wilkes emerged and rocketed a shot into the roof of the net in the 4th minute of stoppage time sending his teammates into a wild celebration.
Coach Leroy Liburd of Village spoke about the elation for that last-minute win and the effort they gave in the second half to change the direction of the game. “We made a few adjustments. We moved some players around in different positions that we thought serve our objective well. It was a keenly contested game; there weren’t many differences between both teams. I think Newtown played a better first half, we played a much better second half. We were fortunate in some instances but in the end, we were good enough to get a 1-0 victory,” Coach Liburd said.
Coach Earl Jones, was obviously disappointed with the loss but was heartened by his team’s performance. “For me, I think we won. You could see clearly that the game was favoring us but that’s how the game goes. Who scores the most goals win,” Jones said.
This is the second match under Coach Jones since his return to the club and some commentators suggest the team has improved in performance since. Coach Jones said all he did was motivated the players to perform better. “I wouldn’t say I did much differently. I just put a little more energy in the guys,” he said. “Technically we are a really good team, but I believe some of us we got to work on the mental part of the game and as you can see it was a mental lapse out there tonight…it’s tough for me I must say…We are down but not out,” he added.
In the night’s other match:
SOL ISLAND AUTO CONAREE 1 – 1 MFCR UNITED OLD ROAD JETS
(halftime score 1- 1)
Scoring for Old Road
Philson Wattley 9th min
Scoring for Conaree
Sylvester Caines 45th min
Old Road struggled all night with injuries with some of their top players such as league leading scorer Tiquanny Williams, who was subbed off early in the first half. Coach Lester Morris comments after the match. “My team was basically sticking to the game plan, trying to get forward, get into the box and looking for their shots and I thought we were equal to it; that’s how we got our first goal,” Morris said. He said after scoring the first goal, the team relaxed a bit and strayed away from the game plan. “I think after a while, the injuries started getting to us and because of that we had to make a lot of substitutions, put guys in some unusual positions and that is what basically made some of the differences tonight,” he said.
For Conaree Club President Delwayne Delaney, the match was a tough one, but they prevailed. “I thought we could have gotten that equalizer a bit earlier. That might have given us a little momentum to get our second goal. But because we had that halftime break that would have probably allowed Old Road to regroup a bit so that’s why we couldn’t push for that second goal,” Delaney said. He wished the injured players on the Old Road team speedy recovery but said this team has work to do on the training ground. “I think we would have not played our best game and we definitely have to go back on the training pitch and work on some things,” Delaney added. All Premier League matches on the weekend were broadcast on the SKNFA Facebook page and website www.sknfa.com.
+++++