Jerome Waite, the Arnett Gardens FC head coach, says shutting down Portmore United’s midfield in the second half was the main reason for his side’s come-from-behind 2-1 win in the Red Stripe Premier League (RSPL) final at the National Stadium on Monday.

Portmore’s Maalique Foster scored as early as the second minute in a bubbly first half.However, Arnett Gardens replied through a pair of classy second-half goals from defender Ranike Anderson (55th minute) and Marvin Morgan (65th) as they lifted the national title for a fifth time.In-form Arnett Gardens goalscorer Fabian Reid had a penalty kick saved by Portmore United goalkeeper Shaven-Sean Paul in the first half.“The low point of our game was that in midfield we gave them too much room to play. That is the area where we nullified them [in the second half],” Waite, who has won four premier league football titles with Arnett Gardens, told the

Jamaica Observer during a post-match interview.“Even in the latter part of the game when they added an attacking player we brought on another defender because we needed to lock shop to ensure that what we had was ours,” continued Waite, who won the coach of the year award.Arnett’s most recent hold on the title came in the 2014-15 season, while five-time former champions Portmore, who also lost in last season’s final to Montego Bay United, most recently won the national crown in the 2011-12 campaign.The stadium was not full to capacity but the vast majority of the approximately 18,000 at the venue were Arnett Gardens supporters.And though it was not necessarily a high-quality encounter the action was tense until the last 15 minutes of the game when it appeared Portmore ran out of gas and ideas.“It [loss in back-to-back finals] is difficult for the team, but one of the things we have to take from it is that we’ve come a far way. We’ve worked after not really having a good season, but making it into the final, and that says a lot for the character of the team,” Linval Dixon, the Portmore United head coach, told the

Observer.“The team tried really hard, but it was never to be. We just couldn’t get over the line. We started well and had the early goal and we were good in the first half. In the second half we made some errors and it cost us the game,” the Portmore coach added.The Portmore team drew first blood through a counter attack led by midfield orchestrator Michael Binns after an Arnett Gardens set-play broke down.Binns took control of the ball and fed a pass to the flying Foster down the right. The pint-sized attacker flicked the ball over the head of an opposing defender before getting just enough on his shot to beat Damian Hyatt from close range.That goal set the tone for Portmore as they looked the sharper team in attack through the pinpoint passing of Binns and the movements of Ricardo Morris and Foster.For most of the first half, they tormented the slow defence of Arnett which was led by Oneil Thompson.But Arnett were gifted a chance to get back into the game when the busy Morgan went down inside the box under a careless tackle from Roberto Johnson.A penalty was called but Reid’s tame kick was pushed away by Paul, diving to his right.The ball was booted for an Arnett throw-in and they took it quickly and a fine square was whipped in to Anderson, who patted a header into the path of Lennox Russell, but he slid in to lift his effort over the bar from inside the six-yard box.The game turned on its head in the second stanza after two moments of brilliance from Arnett Gardens.And the equaliser came from the most unlikely of sources.Defender Anderson, in an advanced position for an Arnett free-kick, was first to latch onto a loose ball and he wrapped his right boot around it to finish in style from just inside the 18-yard box.A mere 10 minutes later, Morgan conjured up a thunderous right-footer from outside the box that beat Paul high at his near post.In between those goals, Binns threatened at the other end with a left-footed grass cutter that sailed past Hyatt’s left upright.Trailing 1-2, Portmore sought impetus by bringing in proven goal poacher Jovan East off the substitutes’ bench. He almost delivered when he cut inside his marker before powering a drive that was turned around the post by Hyatt.Their best chance for an equaliser fell to Foster when left-back Manning raced behind the Arnett defence and fizzed a square but the attacker inexplicably scooped over the goal from underneath the crossbar.Outside of those odd sparks in the second half, Portmore fell flat and were not able to deeply unsettle their opponents.Arnett’s Jason Moore went close with a rasping free kick that was deflected for a corner and Kemal Malcolm shot wide with an angled shot.