Mount Pleasant FA secured only their third win of the campaign and their second under new Manager Wally Downs when they clipped champions Portmore United 1-0 at the The UWI-JFFCaptain Horace Burrell Centre of Excellence last Sunday.

The win moved Mount Pleasant up to third place on eleven points, two behind Portmore United and with a game in hand.

It was a game between two very evenly matched teams which was decided by a first-half header from Kemar Beckford.

Downs was pleased with the all-round effort of his players that secured the vital win that sees them now in a good position to claim a place in the top two.

“I was very pleased. We made a point of saying, if we nullified their important players then that was a big part of stopping them playing.

“We didn’t put anybody on them specifically man to man, but Rose and Morris are very good at drifting into areas that people don’t want to go. So, it was important that our players, once they saw these people drifting into dangerous areas that we closed that space down,” he said.

Downs was pleased with the tactical discipline of his players who got the job right on the day.

“It’s different from marking man to man and people had to be very aware because all the games I have watched, they are very good at going into areas where defenders don’t want to come. So, for our boys to be regimented enough to go out and do their job and close down their space, I was really pleased with that aspect of it,” he noted.

Downs thought his team was deserving of their first-half lead based on the run of play and advised his players to be wary of their opponents in the second half.

“I thought we were well worth our lead in the first half-time. We had chances, they had one chance from a corner, but I thought we had good chances in the first half and was pleased that we can in at 1-0. But I said to these players, no two halves of a football match is ever the same. Wherever you are in the world, don’t expect the same in the second half,” he said.

“In the second half it was downhill and they had the wind, so they were going to be a little bit more dominant and that’s really the nature of the arena we are playing in. But we knew that we had to stand up to that, we knew that they would come to us and when the questions were asked of us, we were strong.”

Beckford, who was scoring for the first time this season, along with the entire organsation, came in for praises from the head coach.

“That’s his first goal of the season. I wasn’t here previously but he has been a good goal scorer in this league and it was great to get him off the mark. But all credit to the whole team.

“When I say the whole team, I mean the chef who had to get up at 3 o’clock in the morning to prepare our pre-match (meal) because we had to travel early, all the kit guys who also made the effort, everybody who has really put out from the start to get us to this position to be able to play, to allow the players to come out and come and represent Mount Pleasant, it was a massive team effort and I can’t thank everybody enough.

“When you are playing the top team in the country, you need to be at your best and everybody from the chef to the kit man has been absolutely superb.”

Mount Pleasant will next play eighth-placed Waterhouse FC, in the feature game on Saturday.

— Dwayne Richards