CATHERINE HALL, St James — The 2015 Flow schoolboy football competitions kick off today and defending champions Clarendon College in the daCosta Cup and Jamaica College in the Manning Cup competition will start the pursuit to retain their titles in a triple-header at the Montego Bay Sports Complex.

Jamaica College will face Calabar High in the opening game set for 2:00 pm followed by Clarendon College taking on Edwin Allen in a daCosta Cup Zone H game starting at 4:45 pm, while former champions Cornwall College and Irwin High will meet in a Zone A game starting at 6:45 pm.

Clarendon College, who will be under the orders of former player Paul ‘Tegat’ Davis in his second stint at the school, will be returning to the scene of their triumph last year when they beat then defending champions St Elizabeth Technical High School (STETHS) to lift the trophy under the leadership of Patrick ‘Jackie’ Walters.

Also today there will be a brief ceremony to officially open the season, while the sponsors have announced entertainment packages for the half-time of the first two games.

In addition to the first two daCosta Cup games, another 29 games are scheduled across 12 zones.

Included in these games will be STETHS opening up their Zone E schedule against Maggotty High in Santa Cruz; Manchester High and Cross Keys will meet in a Zone F game, while Dinthill Technical take on Tacius Golding in Zone K.

Seventy-nine schools will be chasing the daCosta Cup this season with the others expected to bow into action by next weekend.

Today, both Clarendon College and Edwin Allen will start new chapters with new men at the helm, but the goals for each team will be the same: to be the last one standing at the end.

Davis, who played one season at Clarendon College and has coached at several others including William Knibb, while he guided to the final in 2000, said as defending champions his team will be the ones with the target on their back.

“This season it will be more than just playing football,” he told the Jamaica Observer. “It will also be a mind game as everyone will be coming at us hard.”

He said, however, his charges were ready for the competition to start after a long period of preparation. “We have good players from last year and some new ones who have come in so we have to try and blend them together and teach the new ones what it is to represent Clarendon College,” he said.

Clarendon College have retained five starters from last season and seven players from the squad, and Davis said, once they remained healthy, they will be in the running late.

Conroy Brown was promoted from assistant coach at Edwin Allen last season when they were runners-up to Clarendon College, and knows his job will be a hard one if they are to beat Clarendon on the field for the first time.

Edwin Allen were awarded points from a game in the 2013 season and have drawn with Clarendon three times dating back to the 2006 season.

“We are confident that we can do well,” he said, basing his confidence in their pre-season work. “We had a good period of preparation and we think we are on target.”

In the final game of the day, Cornwall College will be putting their unbeaten record in Zone A from last year on the line when they face an Irwin team that has never won a game against Cornwall in the daCosta Cup.

In winning all eight games last year, Cornwall College conceded just two goals and thrashed Irwin 11-0 in one first-round game as they returned to the competition after a break.

Irwin High are, however, expected to be more competitive this season and should do better than they did last year when they lost all their games.

They won the St James FA Under-17 youth competition, beating Green Pond High in the final, but will face a Cornwall College team that could be better than they were last year.

Cornwall College have lost just two starters from last year’s team and will be led by Jourdaine Fletcher, their top scorer from last season, while Peter-Lee Vassell, Geovanni Reid and Leonardo Murray, all of whom scored last year, will return.