Davis left disappointed as Mount Pleasant draw season opener against Tivoli Gardens
Mount Pleasant Football Academy have only themselves to blame for coming away with only a single point against Tivoli Gardens Football Club in their opening game of the 2020-2021 Jamaica Premier League season.
The game ended 0-0, but it could have been a much different score line had they put away a few of the chances they created over the 90 minutes of the game.
Boasting a fitter team with a lot of seasoned veterans, Mount Pleasant were particularly wasteful in front of goal and were left licking their wounds and two dropped points at the final whistle.
Head Coach Paul “Tegat” Davis was a disappointed man at full time.
“In a sense yes, I am disappointed because we got a lot of chances. We should have put away at least one of them. But it’s football. They haven’t played for over a year,” he said.
Davis said that the artificial surface may have been a contributing factor to his team not getting on the score sheet on Saturday.
“There is a little rust in there and maybe the field was a factor, in terms of running and how they step on it, so hopefully the next game, when we go on the grass, it could be different,” he noted.
A lack of urgency was also noted by Davis, who thought his team failed to display the necessary killer instinct to get all three points.
“We were [the fitter team] but I thought we dropped the ball. At times when we stepped the pace up, we slowed it back down and gave the Tivoli team a chance to recuperate. We should have kept pressing the gas on them.
“When you get teams that are not fully fit like that… we were having the better of the game… we should have pushed them back and kept that channel open,” he pointed out.
A glaring miss from a one-on-one opportunity by substitute Francois Swaby was inexcusable, according to Davis.
“Sometimes we can blame the fields, but when you get chances like that, you have to at least put away one. You can’t use the field as an excuse, but it’s football and you just have to accept what is going on,” he resoned.
Mount Pleasant are one of the teams tipped to win the title this season and will be looking to rebound from the dropped points on match day two, which will be played at the same venue at the UWI-JFF Captain Horace Burrell centre of excellence at the UWI, Mona, this weekend.
