Champs Mt Pleasant rally against MBU to keep perfect streak going
TUCKER, St James — Champions Mt Pleasant FA rallied to beat Montego Bay United 2-1 at WesPow Park on Monday, extending their perfect win record to six games in the Wray And Nephew Jamaica Premier League.
All three goals came in a 12-minute span late in the second half after the home team had managed to keep the league leaders at bay with a disciplined performance.
Second-half substitute Johann Weatherly put Montego Bay United ahead with virtually his first touch in the 69th minute, but Sue-Lae McCalla scored in the 77th minute to pull Mt Pleasant FA level before Oquassa Chong was well placed to tap in the winner from about a yard out in the 82nd minute.
Theodore Whitmore, the Mt Pleasant FA coach, was happy for the win but admitted, “the MoBay United team made it difficult for us”, adding “patience was lacking”.
Whitmore told the Jamaica Observer that he thought “we were better in the second half and we came up with the goods”. He added that the adjustment at half-time “was not so hard [as] we just needed to be more patient”.
“The field is small, and we were not accustomed to playing on such a small pitch and we were trying to hit it too long and we over hit it at times,” said Whitmore, the former Reggae Boyz head coach.
MBU’s chief tactician, Brazilian Neider dos Santos said he thought his team played well.
“We marked them well [as] they have a very strong, very good team,” he said. He, however, lamented his team’s missed chances. “In the first half alone we created three clear chances, they created one, and in the second half they created only two chances but they scored them. We had more [chances] but we need to put the ball in the back of the net,” he lamented.
Former national striker Brian Brown, who is playing club football in Jamaica after about seven years, just missed putting MBU ahead when his shot from the edge of the 18-yard area missed the top left-hand corner of the Mt Pleasant FA goal by mere inches.
William Ferreira in the MBU goal was forced to make one save, blocking McCalla at his left post in the 44th minute.
MBU’s Jean Claudio Rios Ferreira headed a ball just wide of the Mt Pleasant FA goal in the 64th minute but the home team took the lead a minute after Weatherly replaced Leo Campbell and Mt Pleasant made a triple change.
Weatherly reacted best to a ball that was bouncing around the Mt Pleasant six-yard box and lashed it past goalkeeper Shaquan Davis into the far right-hand corner.
But the celebrations did not last long as McCalla capitalised on a sluggish pass on the left side of the MBU defence and rifled the ball back past Ferreira into the goal in the 77th minute.
The St Ann-based team were ahead five minutes later when Chung — who replaced Marlon Allen in the 68th minute — was well placed, almost on the goal line, to force the ball past Ferreira and grab all three points.