SPANISH TOWN, St Catherine — Meadows FC became the first team to win the South Central Confederation Super League with an unbeaten record when they carved out a hard-fought 1-0 victory over fellow St Catherine team Newlands FC in the final at the Prison Oval on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Downs FC of Manchester won the second instalment of the Under-20 competition 6-5 on penalties over Meadows FC.

Orville Newell scored the all-important goal for Meadows in the Super League decider when he pumped in a right-footer just five minutes after taking the field as a second half substitute to extend his team’s unbeaten run to 16 games.

But, with the Super League having no title sponsor, the total value of the winner’s purse is yet to be decided.

That seems, however, to be the least of Meadows’ worries, as their focus is now to equal Arlington FC’s record of qualifying for top-flight football as a debutant.

They will face the likes of Reno FC, Cavalier FC and either York United or Benfica FC in the Jamaica Football Federation National Premier League play-offs for one of two available spots in next season’s Digicel Premier League.

“Our objective from day one was to go to the Premier League and this win in the Super League today is just a stepping stone in achieving that (milestone),” Meadows coach, Christopher Russell told the Observer.

“We knew that Newlands would be a different team coming into the final… we beat them 6-1 in the regular season, so I told my players to sit back and let them come at us then we would just counter and I thought they did that well,” he added.

As expected, both teams went at each other from the onset, but instead of exciting the crowd with good passing football, they had referee Oniel Clayton working his whistle overtime — calling numerous foul plays.

In fact, there were only two real goal scoring opportunities in the first half which fell to Meadows, but Julian Francis and Kenroy Whyte failed to make them count.

However, with just six minutes gone in the second stanza, Newell repaid his coach for bringing him on at the start of the half, as he blasted home from some 25 yards.

Dayne Planter’s shot from just outside the centre circle had ricocheted off a Newlands defender and fell nicely for Newell to hit a blistering one-time right-footer that nestled into the upper-right hand corner of the goal.

Earlier, Downs denied Meadows the opportunity of winning the Confed double when they rallied from a goal down to take the Under-20 competition 6-5 in an exciting penalty shoot-out. The scores were locked 1-1 after full and extra-time.

Oshane Smith put Meadows ahead in the 61st minute, but before their cheers could die down — Deshorn Brown restored parity with a strike for Downs two minutes later.

Miguel Barnaby, Demark Gillings, Anthony Carter, Brown, Sydney Gordon and Alburn Facey scored for Downs in the shoot-out, while Andrew Lewin, Roshane Smith, Kevin McDonald, Jermaine Hall and Oshane Smith netted for Meadows.

Downs coach, Clive Adams said: “We are really happy knowing that we come all the way and finally win the championship. Meadows are a very good team, but the guys rose to the occasion and pulled it off.”