MONTEGO BAY, St James — Defending champions St Elizabeth Technical High School (STETHS) are into their fourth straight ISSA/LIME daCosta Cup schoolboy football final after beating Dinthill Technical 1-0 in their semi-final game at Jarettt Park yesterday.

Shawn Genus’ fortuitous first-half goal, which came against the run of play, secured STETHS’ place in next week’s final against Clarendon College, who had won their semi-final against Glenmuir a day earlier.

STETHS stayed on course to defend their rural area double after earlier retaining the Ben Francis Knock-out.

Yesterday’s game was drab for the most part, and the few spectators on hand under a bright afternoon sky had little to cheer about.

STETHS took a long time to get into the game and gave up several scoring chances to Dinthill early, as the team that scored heavily in the earlier rounds seems to have run out of ideas.

After being gifted the early chances, Dinthill appeared to be reliant on the skills of striker Rodave Murray to get them back into the final after more than 20 years.

STETHS coach Omar Wedderburn was nonetheless happy for the victory that sees his school advance to their fifth final in six years.

“There is no such thing as an ugly win,” he said. “We did not have a glossy performance today, but we still came here and met our objective, which was to get to the finals,” he said.

Wedderburn admitted his team did not play up to the standard expected. “There are going to be days like this when your team does not perform up to utmost, but the prize was to be victorious,” he said.

Asked about the lack of goals lately, Wedderburn said he was not worried as long as his team came out the victor in the end.

Dinthill’s assistant coach Dorrian Card told the Sunday Observer he thought the team played well. “They (players) played mostly to the game plan, but that goal against the run of play beat us.

“We got chances but were not as sharp in front of goal as we hoped, we wanted to win and we had the team to win the competition,” Card said.

STETHS had the first run at goal, but Dinthill’s goalkeeper George Brown was off his line in a flash to cancel out the chance.

Dinthill took over the game and pushed back a disorganised-looking STETHS and should have taken the lead after nine minutes when a cross from the right side beat the defence and fell nicely for Murray, but his shot was blocked on the line.

Travar McCullough showed some skills when he beat two men down the left side, cut inside, but his low, hard shot was blocked by Brown.

With time running out in the half and Dinthill having the better of the play, STETHS earned a corner, and while attempting to punch the ball away, the Dinthill goalkeeper only managed to get a small piece of it and it spun backwards and fell into the six-yard area. An alert Genus pounced on the ball and hit it into the goal.