Cornwall seek second senior schoolboy football title against
Cornwall College will be looking to win a second title on Saturday when they take on Clarendon College in the final of the Inter Secondary Schools Association/Wata daCosta Cup at the Montego Bay Sports Complex, starting at 6:00 pm.
The Dr Dean Weatherly-coached team is coming off a massive morale-boosting victory over Jamaica College in the ISSA Champions Cup final, also at the Montego Bay Sports Complex, and confidence in the team is high.
Both teams are unbeaten this year in the daCosta Cup.
Clarendon won all 14 games played, while Cornwall College are unbeaten after 16 games.
Cornwall College will be seeking their 13th lien on the daCosta Cup and their second in three years after beating St Elizabeth Technical in the 2016 final, while Clarendon College, beaten in the final last year by Rusea’s High, will be seeking their first since 2014 when they won their seventh hold.
Both teams — Cornwall College and Clarendon College — earned their spots in the final following contrasting wins against Frome Technical and Dinthill Technical, respectively.
Cornwall College were held without scoring in a daCosta Cup game for the first time in 47 games dating back to the 2016 season, but went on to win 4-2 on penalty kicks.
In the first game, Clarendon College took their time to shake off the rust of not playing for over two weeks since they were knocked out in the first round of the Champions Cup to beat 10-man Dinthill Technical 4-0, all four goals coming in the second half.
National Under-20 player Nique Daley led the rampage with two well-taken goals, while Ricardo McIntosh and Javell Ellis added the other two.
Clarendon College came out on top the last time the two met in the final, in 1998, but Cornwall College have had the better of the two in their most recent meetings.
Cornwall College denied Clarendon twice in semi-finals in the 2016 season, outscoring them 3-2 in the then Super Cup in 2016 at Sabina Park, and then beat them 2-1 in the semi-finals at STETHS a few weeks later.
This year’s top scorers Aiden Jokomba, Shavon McDonald and defender Calvin Gardner were all in the Cornwall College team then, and they are expected to lead the Montego Bay team on Saturday.
Jokomba, who has scored 19 goals so far this season, had come off the bench to score the winner for his team in the daCosta Cup semi-final two years ago.
He has been kept off the scoresheet in the last two games — against Frome Technical and Jamaica College — attracting a lot of defensive attention.
Solano Birch, who was scoring at a goal-a-game pace in the second round and the quarter-finals, has not scored in the four Champions Cup games or the semi-finals.
Both Birch and Jokomba are expected to come good on Saturday.
A lot is also be expected from the defence that has served well so far this season, starting with a run of 414 minutes before allowing their first goal, away to Maldon. and since trailing 1-2 at half- time in their quarter-final game against Garvey Maceo, they have allowed one goal in 585 minutes and 427 since Wolmer’s Boys’ scored a penalty kick in the first half of their first-round game in the Champions Cup.