JAMAICA College (JC) and Haile Selassie High registered contrasting wins to book their places in the semi-finals of the 2016 Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA)/FLOW Walker Cup football competition at the Constant Spring playing field yesterday.

JC and Haile Selassie will thus face each other in the second semi-final at 3:00 pm scheduled to be played at the same venue on Tuesday, after Kingston College and Bridgeport square off in the opener at 1:00 pm.

The Old Hope Road-based JC defeated Holy Trinity 3-0, while Haile Selassie stopped Excelsior High 6-5 on penalties after playing to a 1-1 result after full and extra-time.

It was a clinical performance by JC as they had total control of their match from the outset.

They scored all their goals in the first half through Duhaney Williams in the 17th minute, Ronaldo Brown in the 22nd minute, and Maliek Howell in the 38th minute.

JC’s coach Miguel Coley said he was very pleased with the win and will now be looking forward to the semi-final clash with Haile Selassie.

“We took things a bit easy in the second half after taking a 3-0 lead in the first half. We had to be a little conservative with the players as we cannot allow the players to be injured, as the semi-finals is only four days away,” Coley said.

“I was, however, a bit disappointed and not too pleased when the players did not score goals in the second half as we were all over our opponents,” Coley added.

In the curtain-raiser, Hamish Smith in the 42nd minute scored for Haile Selassie, while Cadine Graham in the 95th minute replied for Excelsior High.

Chase Knight clinched the penalty shoot-out win for Haile Selassie by scoring the team’s sixth goal after goalkeeper Mark Williams saved Excelsior High’s Vashawn Williams’ sixth penalty in the first round of sudden-death.

Christopher Thorpe, Ryan Spence, Chavoy Malcolm, Malik Mills and Alain Skerritt had earlier netted for Excelsior High, while Akeem Grandison, Hamish Hamilton, Mark Williams, Ricardo Phipps and Marion Emmanuel did likewise for Haile Selassie.

Geoffrey Maxwell, coach of Haile Selassie, said the team should have won the match from in the first half. “It is, however, encouraging for the win but it should not have gone down to penalty shoot-out.

“The players need more discipline as they were not playing as a team, but show-balling with individual playing. We got too many scoring chances in the first half that they should put away easily, and they continued wasting quite a few easy scoring opportunities in the second half,” Maxwell lamented.

He said Haile Selassie will have a tough semi-final clash with JC and it should be a very competitive game. “JC is a very good team and we won’t be that easy to beat as we too are coming to win.”