Garvey Maceo eased into the quarter-final round of the ISSA/WATA daCosta Cup competition when they completed a comfortable 2-0 win over Spalding High on Saturday for a 4-1 aggregate victory in the second round of the competition.

The 10th-seed side was expected to win and did so with aplomb over the 23rd-seed outfit at Juici Football Field in Clarendon.

Late first-half goals from Barrington Blake and Gregory Cousins put the tie beyond doubt, and for Garvey Maceo, it was just a matter of protecting what they had in the second half, as Spalding failed to mount any sort of comeback in the second period.

Head Coach Merron Gordon admitted surprise at the ease of victory on Saturday, as he had expected more from a Spalding High team that had all to play for and nothing to lose.

“I thought Spalding would have come a little bit more aggressive, especially in the first ten, fifteen minutes of the game, but I think we had an excellent first game against them. I think that played on their minds somewhat and I think that’s the reason they came not wanting to concede too early, so they were a bit tentative,” he explained.

Gordon says his team is fairly young, but possesses enough quality to put on a good show in the next round of the competition.

“The top 16 teams in the competition; any team can win. I am thinking about taking it a game at a time, take it a step at a time. It’s a young team but we have a lot of quality, with some amount of experience.

“People like Jermaine Muirhead and Barrington Blake who played excellent today [Saturday]. I think he probably got the goal of the season so far from what I have seen. So definitely we want to build on this.

The Clarendon-based school has been drawn in a quarter-final group that includes 2017 daCosta Cup champions Cornwall College, Maggotty High and Manchester High.

They will face their 2019 nemeses Cornwall College in their first quarter-final game today at Juici Football Field, starting at 3:00 pm, while Maggotty and Manchester High will do battle at St Elizabeth Technical Sports Complex, also at 3:00 pm.

—Dwayne Richards