The hunt is now on in earnest for play-off places in the Red Stripe Premier League, and former champions Tivoli Gardens FC have thrown their hat in the ring for a chance to play on beyond the regular season.

Three wins on the trot and three clean sheets to go with those wins has seen the team from west Kingston surge up the tables to close the gap on those that have had a stranglehold on the play-off positions since the start of the season.

After back-to-back 3-0 wins over Harbour View at home and Humble Lion away, Tivoli had to work hard to grind out a 1-0 home win over relegation-threatened UWI on Sunday to start the third round.

Head Coach Philip Williams credited focus as the key to their ninth win of the campaign.

“It’s keeping the focus – that was the problem earlier in the season but today [Sunday] they kept the focus for the 90 minutes,” he said.

Williams believes that putting together proper runs over the remaining 10 games of the season will prove vital to their play-off ambitions.

“We have set ourselves an objective in order to get into the top six, and definitely putting runs like these together is definitely the key to getting into the top six.

“It’s a very tight bunch where teams are winning so definitely we are happy that we can put such a run together,” Williams reasoned.

The uptick in form at Tivoli has not come by accident but by work on specific areas at the club – both on and off the field.

“Definitely we have been working hard on our fitness and also discipline, overall discipline. That was one of the things that was lacking in the first round.

“We lost a lot of games in the 75th and 89th minutes because of a lack of discipline overall, both tactical discipline or discipline generally, and that is one of the areas that the entire team has been working on and it has been bearing fruit,” he said.

Tivoli are currently five games unbeaten, with two draws coming before the three straight wins. And it is this type of consistency that Williams is hoping for over the next few weeks.

“It’s all about putting runs together like we are [doing] now. It’s a tight bunch where we see about four teams that are actually on form right now playing some good football and also winning, so we just need for us to be consistent and hope that other results go our way,” he said.

The win on Sunday finally put the Tivoli goal difference on the positive side. They have now scored 27 goals compared to the 26 conceded – a statistic that could prove vital come season’s end. Keeping clean sheets have certainly helped with improving the goal difference, a consequence of hard work on the training ground.

— Dwayne Richards