Cavalier Football Club are on the cusp of qualifying for the final of the Jamaica Premier League after their 1-0 first-leg semi-final win over Tivoli Gardens Football Club last Saturday.

The two teams will battle today in the second leg at the UWI-JFF Captain Horace Burrell Centre of Excellence starting at 2:30 pm with Cavalier holding the slimmest of leads.

The two games between these teams so far this season have been very close with the regular season game ending 1-1 and the match winner in the first-leg semi-final coming in the 85th minute from substitute Collin Anderson, in a game of few clear-cut chances.

Cavalier are a young outfit that has grown in stature as the season has gone on and despite not having anyone plundering the goals, have been able to find match winners when they need it most.

Shaniel Thomas is their leading scorer with four goals and will be hoping to find the back of the net today. Dwayne Atkinson is their second leading scorer with three, but after starting the season like a house on fire, he has cooled off significantly on the goal scoring front.

Ronaldo Webster has been a key figure in their attack and was a big miss on Saturday. They will continue to sweat on his fitness as he battles back from an ankle injury, as his impact could be decisive, should he be able to make an appearance today.

Tivoli’s Achilles’ heel this season has been their goal scoring and it occurred again last Saturday, as they failed to score for the second time in three play-off games.

Head coach Phillip Williams has vowed to fix the issues ahead of the game today, but the question is whether three days is enough time to get things right, after an entire season of problems.

Stephen Barnett, Trayvone Reid and Dasha Satchwell are all late-season additions who have bolstered the Tivoli Gardens squad and Williams will need these three, along with his other more experienced players, to show up today if they are to overcome the first-leg deficit.

An early goal could be the key to how the tie swings. If Tivoli Gardens were to score first, it would open up the game for which there must be a winner, while an early goal for Cavalier could be enough to see them through to the final.

Cavalier’s Technical Director Rudolph Speid has given his thoughts on the slim lead that his team takes into the return leg.

“It is one of the worst leads you could ever have, a 1-0 lead, because if they score one we could probably start to panic. So, it’s one of the worst leads you could have going into the second leg,” he said.

Speid meanwhile has promised not to sit back, but to approach the second leg on the front foot.

“We are not trying to go and protect it, because this is not a lead,” he said.

Williams says he has identified what is required to overcome the deficit and will have his players ready to execute today.

“We know what they offer and in terms of how they play. There are some areas that we saw that we could have exploited some more and we definitely will be doing some type of periodisation in those areas, to see how best we can execute,” he said.

Extra time could be required to decide this tie, but neither coach will want to go through that with a final pending in three days.

— Dwayne Richards