CATHERINE HALL, St James — Montego Bay United (MBU) successfully cleared the first hurdle in their bid to return to the finals of the Caribbean Football Union’s Club Championship finals after beating Scholars International of Cayman Islands 4-0 in their opening Group Three game at the Montego Bay Sports Complex on Wednesday.

On an evening when they wasted twice as many chances as they put away, the home team was led by a hat-trick from Owayne Gordon as they overran outclassed opponents who were fortunate not to have lost by a wider margin.

Gordon scored in the 25th, 72nd and 79th minutes, while a defender’s goal in the 42nd minute had made the score 2-0 at half-time.

Paul ‘Tegat’ Davis, the MBU coach, was pleased with the win, but was critical of his team’s execution in front of the Scholars International goal.

“The three points are good, but the scoreline… I think we should have got more goals,” he said in an post-game interview.

“I always tell my teams when we get teams like this that are not as competitive, we should capitalise on the goalscoring and don’t get complacent, so I guess I am disappointed again tonight in terms of our goalscoring,” he added.

With Scholars not applying much pressure to MBU’s defence, Davis had the luxury of taking off defenders and adding attacking players in the second half, but the plan did not work as expected.

Allan Ottey, Donovan Carey and teenager Johann Weatherly were introduced. “I brought on more attackers tonight as it was about goalscoring, but just one player scored,” said a disappointed Davis.

While he lamented not realising the flood of goals, Davis was pleased with the overall effort.

“The performance was good, but just the goal scoring was disappointing… sometimes we played too narrow and we needed to spread the game against this team, but it was okay.”

Colin Rowe, the Scholars International coach, admitted his team was outclassed. “It was too easy for MoBay United; their fitness and pace beat us,” he told the

Jamaica Observer. “They have been together a while now, while we had six or so new players in our team and MoBay was also more organised than we were,” said Rowe, a former Wolmer’s Boys’ and Jamaica youth representative.

Scholars International have Jamaican-born goalkeeper Jermaine Brown and the overly anxious Montego Bay United players to thank as the scoreline could have been much wider.

Brown made some brilliant, and at times, courageous saves to keep his team from a more humilating scoreline.

After some near misses by Gordon, Dwayne Ambusley and Rodney, Scholars International defender Jermaine Haughton handled the ball in his area while making a sliding tackle, and Cuban referee Marcus Brea Despaigne pointed to the spot.

Gordon stepped up and buried the spot kick past Brown to give the fans something to cheer about.

MoBay United doubled the advantage in the 42nd minute when Courtney Duval misplayed a ball past his own goalkeeper a foot from the line at the near left post after Jermaine Woozencroft had beaten two defenders and sent in a low hard shot.

It was mostly one-way traffic in the second half, and Gordon almost made it 3-0 in the 63rd minute when he curled a ball from just outside the left side of the 18-yard box off the top right hand corner of the goal frame with Brown well beaten.

Gordon’s aim improved in the 72nd minute when he got to a rebound before any of the Scholars defenders and lashed in the ball into the far left corner.

He then completed his hat-trick seven minutes later when he scored the best goal of the night, dribbling past some defenders, then beating Brown with a laser-like shot from an acute angle into the far corner.