TWO intriguing contests are set to unfold Friday evening at Constant Spring field as the Kingston and St Andrew Football Association (KSAFA) flagship league competitions enter the halfway stage.

In the feature match set for 8:00 pm KSAFA/Wray & Nephew Championship League leaders Olympic Gardens will take on Constant Spring in the mid-season final.

In the opening match at the venue, scheduled to begin 6:00 pm, Cooreville Gardens oppose new Kingston in the KSAFA/Wray & Nephew Major League mid-season showdown.

Olympic Gardens, coached by Ira Hemmings, have been unbeaten from their 11 games this season to sit at the top of the league with 27 points. Since drawing their first three matches of the campaign — which included a 2-2 result against Constant Spring (25 points) — they have been on an eight-game unbeaten run.

Hemmings told the Jamaica Observer that the plan is to stick to what has brought them immense success so far.

“We must approach it with a positive mind frame and, as I said to players at the beginning of the season, I’m asking them to stay focused on the task at hand.

“We want to stay humble, we want to continue to do the things we have been doing that have been giving us the results. We’ve been putting in some hard work over the last few weeks and we’ve been getting some good results, and we don’t expect anything else tomorrow,” he said on the eve of the match.

Veteran Coach Neville “Bertis” Bell has been in charge of Constant Spring since early January, after only two matches into the season.

He expressed confidence his players can execute against a “quality” Olympics Gardens team.

“They [Olympics Gardens] obviously have some quality, and we respect that, but we’re confident… that if we get it right we should be good. But we know we are up against it,” Bell said.

“We’ve done well, [we are] two points behind Olympic so we haven’t done badly either… but we’ll see how we respond to this [test] because there’s probably more pressure on the footballers for this,” he said.

For the evening’s precursor, Cooreville Gardens Head Coach Calvert Fitzgerald said he expects a an “extremely tough” contest against New Kingston after his outfit prevailed 1-0 when both teams clashed earlier this season.

“I’m expecting an extremely tough game from New Kingston because they’re not here by accident. We played them earlier this season and they’ve been much improved since,” he said.

“We’ve prepared the best way we can so our confidence is based on our preparation. We’ve been putting in the work and the players have been responding to training favourably, and I think they are motivated to win,” Fitzgerald continued.

Richard Bryan, the New Kingston coach, said his team is eager to turn the tables on Cooreville.

“We know Cooreville are a team to contend with — they are no walkover. We played them previously and got beaten a goal to nil so tomorrow we have to come with our ‘A’ game.

“They say lightning doesn’t strike one place two times but you never know what can happen. We have to have a frame of mind that’s all about winning,” Bryan said.