Barbican Football Club and Constant Spring Football Club emerged victors of the 2017-2018 Magnum-sponsored Kingston and St Andrew Football Association (KSAFA) Super and Major League titles, respectively, after competitive finals at Constant Spring Complex on Friday night.

Barbican FC scored a 4-2 penalty victory against Brown’s Town FC to win the Magnum/KSAFA 2018 Super League. They will now go on to represent KSAFA in the Premier League Play-off with the hope of gaining promotion to the next Red Stripe Premier League season.

In the first game of the double-header, Constant Spring FC defeated Meadforest FC 2-0 at the end of extra time to cop the Major League title.

Both teams had already been promoted to the Super League for next season by virtue of reaching the Major League final.

In the feature Super League final both teams played plucky football with occasional scoring chances that escaped their grasp in front of a sell-out crowd at the venue, and after full-time and extra time failed to bring about a winning result, referee Oshane Nation introduced penalty kicks.

Brown’s Town were first to the spot, but missed. From then on the writing was on the wall as they missed twice to hand the opportunity for advancement to Barbican. It was a bitter disappointment for the Brown’s Town following who came out in large numbers to support the Karume Huie-coached team.

For the victors it was well-deserved victory, according to manager Winston Warren: “It was a job done with enough quality and thought to carry on the journey. It was always the intention to get the team back into the Premier League, but first we had to place the team in a position for it to get to this stage of the competition. To do that we had to instil that sense of self-belief in a team of youngsters and this was channelled through the senior players in the team.

“The final was a test of that self-belief as the victory was a hard-fought one where Brown’s Town were again an even more difficult proposition to overcome on this occasion. They gave as much as they received and I believe that it was our perseverance, our will to succeed and to overcome obstacles which gained for us the victory in the end. I must not fail to mention that the Herculean effort by the senior members of the team in assisting the young team should not go unnoticed.”

Barbican’s next stop is Wadadah FC of St James. Themselves a former Premier League campaigner and winner who have been in the wilderness for many years, Warren and his team are already planning ahead. “The real journey has now begun. Wadadah is our next stop and with us having to travel to Montego Bay on Sunday (June 3) to play our first match in the Premier League Play-offs, it is going to be a difficult task and this needs careful planning as this calls for a different level of preparation,” he explained.

Losing coach Huie said while he thought his team had created enough good scoring chances to walk away with victory, he had to applaud the victors. “I must hand it to Barbican; their approach was the more mature and it worked in their favour. Brown’s Town with a little more patience could have left Constant Spring as winners,” he added.

Meanwhile, a goal each half of extra time from Roderick Williams (103rd) and Rohan Parker (128th) sealed victory for Constant Spring and hand coach Wayne Palmer his first victory as coach.

Palmer, a former national player who took over the coaching job at Constant Spring for the past five months, was quite pleased with his achievement.

“I would not say that it was hard to motivate them and get them organised to play as I came here and saw some young, agile players; the youngest one being 16 and the oldest 31, so it was not difficult to organised them to get them to play and every day they came they wanted to train. The only problem I have is sometimes in a game they shut off, so as coach I have to be calling them and showing them what they need to do as the game is not all about kicking the ball and run; one has to be able to bring the ball under control before distribution and things like that.

“In today’s game Meadforest proved to be more resolute than in their previous games. In the first game of which I was not the coach we beat them, and in the next game that I was coach we again beat them, this time 2-1. So today we did not expect to come here and lay down and die, we had to go out there and play engaging football to get a positive result.

“To me, today was the best game we have played and the players were passing the ball around to get a positive result. It was not organised at all times as one would expect because you are dealing with young minds. Sometimes they get overzealous and get mixed up with what they really want to do. But overall they made me feel good how they played. Even their defending was quite good for the most part. And this I think augurs well for the future to take the club to the next level,” Palmer said.

Constant Spring’s Manager Danny Lyn was a happy man with the team’s achievement. “This basically is a young team. They say they want to make an advancement that they want to go back to the Premier League and I decided that this being a young team next year we can organise to get back to the Premier League by then they should have acquired enough experience. So we are going to continue with the young players and it will be a work in progress as they are easier to manage, easier to coach and will follow instructions.

“Overall the season was a fighting season and with experience gained by playing two games with 10 players and still come up victorious is good preparation for the upcoming season,” Lyn said.