MONTEGO BAY, St James — Port Antonio High’s head coach Carl Brissett will not be distracted by discussions about the venue of today’s venue for their ISSA/Lime daCosta Cup semifinal game against St Elizabeth Technical High (STETHS) at Jarrett Park set to start at 3:00pm.

Brissett who is in his seventh season as coach of Port Antonio High, says he will not allow the talk to distract his players or take away from his preparation for what will be the biggest game so far for him and his team.

“This is a semi-final and we will play anybody anywhere, even in their house,” Brissett told OBSERVER ONLINE yesterday, “If this game was set to be played in Jerusalem we will play there.”

While this will be Port Antonio High’s second daCosta Cup semi-final, it will be the first in which they will compete after sensationally forfeiting their first in 1992 after refusing to travel to Montego Bay to face a western based school.

Asked what’s difference this time, 21 years later, Brissett told OBSERVER ONLINE, “Maybe it’s the coach,” he said resolutely, “we will play anywhere.”

Brissett said he was expecting strong support at Jarrett Park today, “I can’t speak to any crowd or numbers but we will have support,”

The confident sounding coach as expected was backing his team to win and advance to next Saturday’s final.

He admitted that this was a “big achievement” for the team and adding that it had served to lift up the school and wider community in Port Antonio.

Today he said the plan was to continue doing what they have done all season, “play as a team, we don’t have any individual stars, we attack and defend as a unit, that is the team’s strength.”

And Brissett’s confidence has seeped into the team’s psyche and “they will not be backing down” against STETHS who are seeking to qualify for both the Ben Francis KO and the daCosta cup finals in back to back seasons.

STETHS is expected to be led by Khesanio Hall who made his national senior team debut a week ago and has scored 34 goals although failing to find the back of the net in his last two outings.

Brissett said however they would not be paying any special attention to the prolific scorer, “we will be concentrating on the team and how to stop them,” adding that Port Antonio High’s time spent camping at STETHS in the pre-season could help the team.

“We know a lot about this STETHS team and they know about us as well,” Brissett told OBSERVER ONLINE.

STETHS’ coach Omar Wedderburn however said that if the Port Antonio coach is to rely on what he saw in the pre-season, it would not help him.

“Pre-season and now are two totally different things,” Wedderburn argued, “If you saw us in the pre-season you would not think we could have made it to this stage.”

Wedderburn said that the week’s rest since last weekend’s final set of games in the quarterfinal round gave them the chance to recoup “physically and mentally” adding that a few of the players “needed the rest.”

After dominating all comers from the first two rounds of the daCosta cup and the Ben Francis KO that they won for the fourth straight time, STETHS has managed just two goals in their last three games while Hall has been kept off the score sheet in their last two games, a 0-0 draw against Frome Technical and a 1-0 win over Green Island.

Wedderburn says he is not concerned by those statistics however, “as long as we win games, that’s the main thing and Hall wont score in all games and when he does not we hope others will step up, it’s about the team not about Hall,” he said.

Wedderburn was nonetheless full of admiration for the Port Antonio team, “they are a very good team,” he said, adding that the four teams in the semi-finals were actually the best teams in the competition, “all four teams have the quality to win.”

Port Antonio high has been the most potent scoring team since the Inter-zone round, accounting for 19 goals with the duo of Daniel Roberts and Christopher Smith accounting for 10.

STETHS meanwhile has scored 14 goals over the same span.