Manning Cup champions JC target more silverware this season
HAVING won their 31st title of the ISSA/Digicel Manning Cup last Saturday, principal of Jamaica College (JC) Wayne Robinson says they are now aiming to make a sweep of all the football titles this season.
Robinson made his comments during Monday’s devotion ceremony on the school’s campus, as members of this year’s victorious Manning Cup team gathered to celebrate Friday’s night’s exciting 8-7 penalty shoot-out victory over St Andrew Technical High School in the final at Sabina Park. Both teams played out a 1-1 draw at full time.
JC will face rivals Kingston College in the Champions Cup Knockout final on Saturday at Sabina Park before meeting daCosta Champions Clarendon College in the Olivier Shield all-island play-offs.
The “Dark Blues”, who are defending champions of the Under-14 competition, will meet Excelsior in the semi-finals of this tournament today. They will also contest the semi-finals of the Under-16 competition when they oppose Campion College.
“We have four more titles and we want all of them this season,” said Robinson. “Tomorrow [today] we are in the Under-14 and Under-16 semi-finals and we want all of them and we are going for them — and we are going to give them our best shot,” he said.
“We have the Champions Cup and Olivier Shield and we are going for them, and wherever it falls it falls because we are going to give it our best shot,” Robinson added.
The victory gave JC their third lien on the Manning Cup trophy in the last five years and Robinson stated he was very happy with his team’s performance during Saturday’s final.
“I told the boys that this is the result of our hard work because we have put in a whole heap of preparations and a lot of hard work, and so I thanked them for bringing home the trophy,” he said.
“This is our 31st trophy and so anybody who talks about anything else should talk about the amount of trophies that we have won, so it must be a system and it must be something that we have in place that is going right at Jamaica College,” Robinson reasoned.
Davion Ferguson, coach of JC, also agrees with Robinson that the Old Hope-road based institution can make a sweep of all the schoolboy titles this season.
“I think that all three units are good enough to win the competitions that they are in,” said Ferguson. I think the Under-14 team have a very good chance of repeating, and with the Under-16 team, we lost in the semi-finals last year but I think that this team that we have, in my mind, is one of the better units in the competition,” he said.
Ferguson also shared that he feels very upbeat that they will win the Champions Cup and Olivier Shield titles.
“I am feeling good, but we don’t want to get too overly excited yet because we have two titles to play for and we really want to win both of them, and so after the 14th of December we will really get the celebrations going,” he said.
“We definitely want to win all the titles that we are competing for and so definitely we want to sweep them,” Ferguson noted.