HOPEWELL, Hanover — PROMINENT Montego Bay businessman Mark Kerr-Jarrett has urged the players on Red Stripe Premier League champions Montego Bay United (MBU) not to get complacent and to work harder in an effort to successfully defend their title next season.

At Saturday’s awards ceremony to commemorate the 2013-2014 season held at Sky Beach in Hopewell, Hanover, Kerr-Jarrett told the players and members of the management team that they would have to work even harder in the coming season to defend their title.

The businessman who had donated the land on which MBU’s home field, Wespow Park, is located in Tucker, quoted American pastor Joyce Meyer in his charge saying the formula to stay on top was “Keep doing what you did to get there,” adding that too often “we have seen great success where you get to the top then lie back on your past achievements and laurels and start living in the past forgetting that tomorrow is a new day.”

He likened achieving success to a team of rowers, all of whom had to train together and work together to get positive results.

“When you reach your first goal, you have to keep paddling just to maintain position or you will slip backwards,” said the successful businessman.

“You are now champions, you now have a decision to make, do we now stay here at what will soon be last year’s champions or do we dig in together and keep rowing upstream to the next goal?”

He, however, expressed confidence in the team saying, “I know that for Montego Bay United FC standing still is not an option, so you are going to have to dig in and press on to the greater and higher achievements, getting stronger individually and as a team.”

Having proven their mettle, Kerr-Jarrett stressed that the MBU players had more work to do.

“You have to choose as a team and as a club what your destiny will be, are you going to sit down and be the 2014 champions which next year will be last year’s champions, or are we going to take the experiences that we have had, the camaraderie and teamwork that we have built, the fitness and strength that we have strived for, and are we going to press on irrespective of the challenges and be next year’s champions and put our goal higher and higher every year? he asked.

Praising the exploits of the MBU team, Kerr-Jarrett said they now have to be the example for those youngsters coming behind them.

“You have made all of us very proud and you are an example to the youth of Jamaica that there is a better place than the street corner and I truly believe that with hard work many of you will be picked for the Jamaican national team and through your achievements will be able to lead the others in discipline, commitment and teamwork and take Jamaica to the international arena with dignity and honour.”