Marlon Williams, the Rivoli United Assistant Coach, says his team will continue the fight to avoid relegation from the Red Stripe Premier League football competition.

Their latest defeat – a 0-1 loss at home to Portmore United last week – left them stranded in one of two relegation places. The Spanish Town, St Catherine-based team has 22 points from 25 games and is 11th in the 12-team table.

Despite the gloomy picture, Williams radiated no small amount determination and optimism.

“We have to be men; when you fall down you have to learn to rise again. We lost this game [to Portmore], it’s behind us, so we have to just rise again. We have to look to the future,” he said.

According to Williams, the concession of a late goal via Paul Wilson’s superb free-kick was evidence that his team thwarted the more fancied Portmore outfit to the very end.

“It was a positive game. We played the match very well, the boys played to instructions and they played very hard. We dug in and we showed that the fight is on. But we got chances and we didn’t put them away. Unfortunately, we gave up a soft free-kick and we paid for it,” Williams added.

Portmore United Head Coach Geoffrey Hewitt was a relieved man after this team snapped a three-game losing slide. They are third with 46 points from 25 games.

“It’s definitely a big boost because in any competition that you play and you lose three consecutive games. It is going to have a psychological effect impact on the team. But we did a lot of sessions in which we took the focus away from [playing] football and tried to get back the mental state of the game,” Hewitt told the Jamaica Observer.

“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination, but I must credit the team because they stuck to the plan…and we came out victorious,” the Portmore coach said.

His club is favourably positioned to take one of the RSPL semi-final spots at the end of 33 preliminary games. Hewitt says he wants his team to finish the preliminary phase of the season strongly.

“We’re taking it one game at a time. We lost three games on the trot and now we are trying to rebuild, refocus and just work extremely hard, and try to finish with as many points as we can,” Hewitt said.

—Sanjay Myers