Anthony Patrick secured his first win as head coach at Molynes United at his fourth attempt when they edged Humble Lions 1-0 at The UWI-JFF Captain Horace Burrell Centre of Excellence on Saturday.

Patrick, who took over from Calvert Fitzgerald two games into the season, now has a record of one win, two draws and one loss in his time in charge.

Humble Lions dominated the game in the first half and for much of the second. But as the game wore on, Molynes United came into their own and created a few chances, though failing to properly test Dennis Taylor in goal.

The game seemed destined for a draw until Molynes United Captain Nicholas Nelson curled a beautiful free kick from twenty one yards into the top right corner of the goal in the 90th minute.

Patrick thought that based on the run of play in the second half, his team was the deserved winner.

“When you look on the last 15, 20 minutes of the game we were all over Humble Lion, it’s just to get that one in the back of the net and defend it from there, but we waited a little late, but never too late.”

Patrick said inexperience is the reason his team failed to put the game away earlier.

“We asked them to take a lot of shots but they were trying for power, brute force, they weren’t going for finesse. They are youngsters and we asked them just to be calm and collected and wait on the opportunities to come,” he said.

Despite being near the foot of the table, Molynes United, who are on six points, are still within touching distance of some teams at the top.

“We are looking at that, but we are going to take it game by game. The youngsters starting to express themselves more and more and that’s what I want. Once they continue to do that, we can continue to get positive results.

Patrick made a few changes to his defensive set-up, which he said contributed to his team’s success.

“When you look on the last three games, we gave up some goals, but we came up with a clean sheet today. We asked the senior players to take responsibility and asked them to be more defensive. We kept a clean sheet, we got one goal and we were able to defend it.”

Veteran defender Kemar Seivwright played a major role defensively to the team’s second clean sheet of the season and Patrick was happy with the tactical discipline of his team that effectively nullified the attacking threats of Humble Lion.

“From earlier in the week, I told him that I was not going to ask him to sweep the team, I wanted him to mark Andre Clennon for me and I asked one of my midfielders to get close to Vanzie in the middle of the field. Once you can nullify those two, then I think you have a wonderful chance and we nullify them, Vanzie, they had to pull him and that made a lot of difference in the middle of the field.”

With four games left to play in their regular season, Molynes United are still realistic with a chance of making the play-offs.

— Dwayne Richards