SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth — If the fat lady hadn’t yet started singing on Tuesday afternoon, she had surely cleared her throat and was preparing to stand and deliver.

With just over a minute left of time added, defending ISSA/Lime daCosta Cup champions St Elizabeth Technical High School (STETHS) seemed doomed to their first defeat in the rural competition since losing to Glenmuir High in the 2012 final.

Manchester High, the team STETHS had thrice denied in major finals since 2009, were on the threshold of a famous victory on the strength of a defender’s goal in the 18th minute.

Yet, STETHS still had what would surely be their final opportunity. It was a free kick forty metres from goal on the left side of the field, from the attacking side’s perspective.

As the capacity crowd at the STETHS sports complex watched in tension-packed suspense, Donjay Smith whipped the free kick high and diagonally across the face of goal.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

Big, towering defender Rushane McClymont who had watched in despair as his errant header found the back of the net to give Manchester High the lead, leapt high to meet Smith’s delivery.

The defender met the cross perfectly, his neck twisting sharply to the right and his head guiding the ball downwards and past goalkeeper Nicholas King who until then had enjoyed a good afternoon.

As the Manchester High supporters watched in stunned silence, STETHS were beside themselves with joy. Flat on the ground as his teammates converged, McClymont , a national age-group representative, knew he had joined the great pantheon of STETHS football heroes, dating back to the 1960s.

“Heart of a champion,” was the low-voiced comment of an Inter Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) official watching from the sidelines.

The 1-1 draw had given STETHS the number one spot in Zone Three ahead of Manchester High entering the quarter-final stage of the daCosta Cup. Most crucially, the draw had ensured that STETHS will be the team from that zone contesting the cash-rich Lime Cup which opens this weekend.

The evenly contested game was a tense affair, with moments of considerable excitement. It was contested mostly in midfield with chances coming few and far between, the easiest falling to STETHS on or around the fifth minute. Running on to a superb defence-splitting pass from midfield, Jovoney Brown with King and the entire defence line beaten kicked too tamely, allowing a defender to clear off the line.

But Manchester High led, by the superb touch and passing of senior national representative Isamnia Cohen, dominated most of the early exchanges and their goal was the result of consistent pressure. The corner kick, crisply hit across the face of goal, left STETHS goalkeeper Carson Findlay and his defenders at sixes and sevens culminating in McClymont’s attempted headed clearance hitting the back of his own net.

STETHS kept their composure and kept coming forward thereafter, though their passing in the final attacking third left much to be desired. In the end, the draw made possible by McClymont’s wonderful finish at the death was well deserved.