THE way in which they brought the curtains down on the 2014 schoolboy football season wasn’t spectacular. But watching Jamaica College neutralised a very good Clarendon College team to retain their Olivier Shield title was admirable. The phrase ‘class act’ wasn’t far from lips.

They may not possess the panache of the classic St George’s College outfit of 2012, but they are equally pleasing on the eyes — big, strong, athletic, intelligent and clinical in front of goal. Plus, they don’t waste time overdoing that Pep Guardiola-Barcelona-type stuff. Their coach, Miguel Coley, said they are “not the most skilful”, but “we are tough” and “we are efficient”. (And perhaps that’s one of the reasons why their captain, Junior Flemmings, is treated like one of the endangered species. He’s a rare breed in this JC team, basically the only player who consistently takes more than three touches off the ball in a given attack – no surprise, then, that his 23 goals make him the season’s top scorer.)

Yes, that 2-3 defeat to St George’s College in the Walker Cup final robbed them of perfection, meaning they will have to wait at least another season to get one more crack at Rusea’s High’s 1985 Quadruple. But this is still a very impressive return in one term: three months, 21 games, 19 victories, one draw, one defeat, 79 goals for and 13 against – which resulted in four finals and three trophies.

Of those three titles, the LIME Super Cup victory over Holy Trinity (2-0 at Sabina Park) showed that JC can dominate a game from start to finish. The 2-1 beating of Charlie Smith in the Manning Cup final demonstrated their resilience. Pegged at 1-1 by Bebeto McDonald’s super strike, they simply up the tempo to clinch their 26th urban area title. However, what this latest triumph over Clarendon College has revealed is that JC also possess resilience. The defeat to St George’s would have been crippling for lesser teams, yet these youngsters simply picked themselves off the canvas to deliver the knockout blow in the final round.

But, as usual, there will be criticisms.

Already, there is the argument that “JC FC” were “only” successful this season because they recruited heavily in the summer — a backlash which seems utterly absurd. The rules, rightly or wrongly, allow for excessive recruiting, so why waste time arguing with

the Jamaica College administration? Then, again, perhaps this criticism has nothing to do with recruiting. Maybe it’s just a cry-baby response from opponents who, having failed to get the job done on the field, are simply trying to find another way to bruise their conqueror’s ego.

The truth is, Jamaica College is a well-oiled schoolboy machinery and we would be ignorant to think that their success this season was based solely on their decision to up their game in the student-athlete recruitment market. They have one of the better sports programmes in the country — backed by an obviously proud group of past students — and they have an impressive collection of trophies (48) to show that their success, then and now, cannot simply be the result of casting their scouting net wide and far. Gathering the talent is only a part of the process; you also need a good management structure to make it work. Other top high schools have tried it in recent years, yet they are still waiting to break their duck, which means an important ingredient is missing. Winning a schoolboy football title, let alone three in a single season, should therefore not be reduced to a team’s ability to attract top student-athletes, especially when it comes to football — a team sport. But, as the JC team manager, Ian Forbes, recently said: “Nobody stone green mangoes”.

Love them or hate them, it’s hard to disagree with him.

On Saturday, the way in which they defused the daCosta Cup champions — who, remember, were playing in their backyard — was indeed enviable. They played with the kind

of confidence and professionalism that are rarely seen at this level. They hogged the ball from the outset, with the attacking triplet of Flemmings, Raffique Bryan and Akeem Shackleford being the main protagonists. Without the ball, they were aggressive, quicker to the loose balls and defended one-on-one situations in a pair. Once they recovered possession, there was only one thing on their minds: trying to find a direct route to goal. And when the goal arrived on 16 minutes, no one inside Juici Park could say they didn’t deserve it.

Raffique Bryan was released down the right channel but quickly got attention from the towering Duchaun Campbell, who went toe-to-toe with his opponent towards the goal line. Bryan, however, proved the stronger of the two. He outmuscled the Clarendon College defender, who slipped and allowed the strapping JC number 11 to cut back the ball for the equally imposing figure of Shackleford. In one motion, the unmarked Shackleford turned and slammed the ball into the roof, before running off to celebrate with his teammates.

Unlike the previous two all-island play-offs, when the rural area champions

were outclassed, Clarendon College weren’t embarrassed, and, at one-nil, scoring an equaliser was always a possibility. But you also sensed that, even if they did manage to draw level, JC had it within them to find the winner – which draws into sharp focus the chasm in quality between the Manning Cup and the daCosta Cup competitions.

It’s now 10 years and counting since a rural school won the Shield outright (Glenmuir High, in ’04, were the last to do so). And based on the evidence from the inaugural staging of the LIME Super Cup, where only two schools outside of the Corporate Area made it past the first round, it could well be another decade before a daCosta Cup champion – unless there is a one-off success story – breaks the Manning Cup monopoly.

Asked what might it take to close the gap, Jackie Walters, the last coach to lead a rural team to the symbol of schoolboy football supremacy, and the current Clarendon College coach, gave a an instructive but worrying response. He said: “Unless a serious development programme is put in place at the parish level, it could continue like this.”

Walters’ response is worrying because, with the snail’s pace at which genuine football development takes place in this country, especially in the rural area, which is handicapped by a mountain of issues, there is no telling when the seed of such a programme will be planted for us to start reaping success.