CATHERINE HALL, St James — A brilliant free kick from the in-form Brandon Curate helped defending champions Cornwall College advance to the quarter-finals of the ISSA Champions Cup after beating Charlie Smith High 1-0 in their first-round game at Montego Bay Sports Complex on Saturday evening.

Frome Technical also advanced to the top eight and into today’s draw for the second round after beating Camperdown High 5-4 on penalties after drawing 1-1 at STETHS Sports Complex in Santa Cruz, while former champions St George’s College led BB Coke 3-2 at half time before the game was called off at half-time because of a waterlogged field.

The game will resume at 1:00 pm today.

At Catherine Hall on Saturday, the holders made heavy weather of the game despite dominating the affair against a Charlie Smith team that failed to register a single shot on goal. The visitors wasted several scoring chances and largely lacked imagination in the final third.

Curate, who was moved from a wing back position early in the season into a centre forward, has scored all four of Cornwall College’s goals in their last two games after getting a hat-trick last Tuesday in their 3-0 win over Maggotty High in a daCosta Cup quarter-final game.

He was responsible for a number of misses, however, along with Raheim Heaven and Kamali Powell, all spurning chances that could have put the game away as early as the first half.

Dr Dean Weatherly, the Cornwall College coach, was thankful for what he described as a “frustrating game” and said the lesson they took away from the game was “we must do better when we get scoring chances to put away games”.

Cornwall College settled early and were able to pass the ball around at will against an opposition that offered very little.

“In these games you can make one little mistake and lose the game 1-0… but it was a good game as we played very well, we wore them down considering that they played a few days ago and travelled and our passing game was very good,” said Weatherly.

Charlie Smith Coach Jerome Waite noted that playing three games in six days and having to travel put them behind the proverbial eight ball. Still, he praised his team.

“It was a spirited performance today (Saturday) and things can only get better from here and we have to give the players credit, we have played three games in six days, no-where over the world that happens, teams must be given 72 hours after games to recuperate,” said the veteran coach.

Having played on Thursday, losing 0-5 to Kingston College in a Manning Cup quarter-final game, Waite said the game plan was to “try and soak up pressure and play on the counter,” but that ploy was not evident thnroughout the encounter.

Cornwall College came close a few times in the first half, Curate curling a left-footer past the far left post in the 21st minute, with Edwards managing to block a shot for a corner 10 minutes later.

Heaven hit the cross bar in the 34th minute and Charlie Smith were able to clear the ball away out of danger.

Following an extended half-time break after the flood lights ‘chipped out’ and took a while to get back up to full power, Cornwall College continued to dominate. Tavoy Nicely, who was given licence to overlap, just missed the far right post by inches in the 50th minute after getting by three defenders.

Edwards kept Curate out in the 63rd minute when he went to his left to pluck a curling shot out of the air and late in the game the Charlie Smith defence just managed to keep the ball out of the goal in a melee.

Cornwall finally got the breakthrough, deep into time added when Curate finally beat Edwards with a superb free kick from about 27 yards out, curling it from the right side of the field into the top left hand corner of the goal past the finger tips of the Charlie Smith goalkeeper.