Brown’s Town’s are hoping their young lions absorb and execute coaching lessons well, as they strive to go one better than losing last year’s final in the Magnum KSAFA Super League.

The east Kingston team played the first game in the 2019 season against Central Kingston at Harbour View Mini Stadium on Friday night, and ran out 1-0 winners through a goal scored by Dillon McEnnis in the 69th minute.

“It was a good game; victory was really good for the youngsters,” said Brown’s Town coach Rohan “Hooker” Rousseau, a baller in his own right.

“We were finalists last year, but this year it’s a pretty young team with a few experienced players. There’s a lot of scope for improvement… we just hope that the youngsters can take whatever is being coached to them and hope that it can help them in their game, because looking at this game now basically there’s a lot of experience in terms of Boys’ Town,” added Rousseau, as he watched the second game of the night’s double-header, the goalless Boys’ Town-Rockfort FC encounter.

Rousseau explained more about the improvements needed in his team.

“In terms of the physical attributes, our team basically is much smaller, so we’ll need to improve in terms of close control, movements off the ball to compete with teams like this. Again, reaching the finals (last season), teams are going to come at you — people are expecting that you must be there again,” he reasoned.

“The youngsters are young enough to learn, their brain is young, so let’s hope that they can open their mind to it and have the attribute and view, or goal, to be in the final again this year and even going further,” said Rousseau.

It was a game of fine margins and Central Kingston, whose quality, is highlighted by the fact they missed the semis by one point last season, is looking to tighten up in their next outing.

“We just need to come again and go back to the drawing board, because it’s some little mistakes that caused us to lose the game one-love. The coach and the players have to come back and give a better performance next week. We didn’t play bad, it’s just little blunders around the back, and we finished one-love.we still held our composure and finished the game,” said Donavan Alvaranga, the team’s captain.

“It’s our first game, we didn’t perform badly. it’s a simple mistake [that] cost us the game,” Alvaragna continued. “Our backline needs to improve mostly and our goalscoring part of the team, because if we don’t score we can’t win games — and we’re conceding. so we just need to work on those two parts in the team going forward to see if we can win this league.”

Also looking to win are Boys’ Town, just demoted from the National Premier League, and Rockfort FC, who made the semi-finals in the past five years.

For Boys’ Town, head coach Andrew Price says they need to get tougher.

“They are young and they are going to learn, and they are going to have to toughen up and get ready for some robust football — because all the teams are going to be coming for Boys’ Town this season, so it’s not going to be an easy road. But it was a good baptism and we need to learn from this and move on,” said Price.

Omar Henry, Rockfort FC’s head coach, noted that the blend of old and new players did not translate to desired fluency.

“It’s our first game. For me, we played an awesome game. we played well for the first time, the old guys mixing up with the new guys — so you (did not) expect to get a free- flowing football; we’ve to gel. I’m alright with the point that we got,” said Henry.