Manning Cup champions Kingston College (KC) capped a fine end to their schoolboy football season by lifting the ISSA Olivier Shield for the first time in 36 years when they blanked daCosta Cup winners Garvey Maceo High 2-0 on Saturday.

Goals either side of half-time from Luis Watson and Captain Jemone Barclay helped the ‘Purples’ to victory at St Elizabeth Technical High School Sports Complex. Clarendon-based Garvey Maceo only had themselves to blame after spurning a host of first-half chances to bury their opponents from North Street.

Head coach of KC Ludlow Bernard acknowledged that his team didn’t have the best of games on the day but lauded the achievement of his players.

“It was not necessarily the best of games, but then again it is probably the best achievement which is probably a lot more important,” he said.

Bernard insisted that the only thing that was important on the day was winning the shield.

“It was all about winning this game today. We didn’t come here to be exciting and ecstatic, we wanted to be efficient,” he said.

He explained that a change in goalkeeper for the game may have thrown off the defensive unit of the team.

“We didn’t start out well, we had a new goalkeeper in and I think that probably caused some butterflies at the back of the pitch.”

Having fallen to Clarendon College in the 2018 Olivier Shield game, Bernard was able to draw on his experience to cope with the situation and guide his team to the win.

“A lot of look-ins were created by the Garvey Maceo team, but they failed to capitalise. This reminds me of 2018 when we were very dominant against Clarendon College and we lost out in the 87th minute. It was thinking about that, that I realise that this probably is destiny.

“It’s destiny that we had to have a new goalkeeper, it’s destiny that they weren’t scoring and that we were going to capitalise on any chances that we got and so we did,” Bernard reasoned.

Tactical adjustments were critical to coping with the threat of their opponents, he explained.

“We made some adjustments in the middle of the park in the middle of the first half and I think that helped to stabilise things.

“The Garvey team is a very aggressive team and they really did go at us, but they left a lot of spaces at the back which we did really capitalise on.”

KC’s only blemish this season came in the Champions Cup when they were eliminated by Clarendon College.

But the Olivier Shield triumph has left Bernard feeling accomplished as the head coach of his alma mater.

“For me, personally, it is indeed really a good feeling. A feeling of accomplishment, a feeling of being rewarded and a feeling also of being appreciated by the KC fraternity.”

Bernard has now won all the Under-19 trophies on offer since taking over as head coach of Kingston College. He won the Walker Cup in 2016, the Super Cup in 2017, the Manning Cup in 2018, the renamed Champions Cup (formerly Super Cup) in 2019, and after a one-year absence of schoolboy football, he won the Manning Cup and the Olivier Shield to close out the set of trophies.

— Dwayne Richards