ANCHOVY, St James — Anchovy High are sitting atop Zone B of the Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association/Wata daCosta Cup football competition, after pulling off a historic 1-0 win over many-time champions Rusea’s High on Saturday.

Maliek Stephenson’s first-half goal will go down in history as the decisive strike at Anchovy’s playing field.

Anchovy High, nestled in the hills overlooking Montego Bay, had defeated the Hanover-based giants in 2006 but the victory was wiped off the record books because one of their players was ruled ineligible due to a discrepancy in his transfer from another school.

Maurice Duncan, Anchovy High’s newly hired coach, admitted he was pleasantly surprised by the positive start but cautioned there are many more obstacles ahead.

“There [is] a lot of football still to be played. We have to face Frome Technical, Cambridge, and we have to go to Rusea’s High,” he said.

Duncan told the Jamaica Observer that Saturday’s performance was about “the boys showing great heart”. He said that none of the players on the team, which has an average age of 16 years, “had ever played at this level before”.

He continued: “I knew our limitations going into the game. We only had five weeks together and we were not even thinking about leaving the zone; this was supposed to be about giving them exposure and then see what they could do next year.”

Anchovy, one of several teams that returned to the competition this season, has had fluctuating fortunes in schoolboy football over the last five years, from the high of making it to the quarter-finals in 2019 season under then coach Hector Wright, to losing all 10 Zone A games in the 2022 campaign, conceding 38 goals in the process.

A shift to Zone B might have been the tonic they needed as they have made a good start this season, winning their first two games. They are tied in the lead on six points with former winners Frome Technical.

Duncan said the execution against Rusea’s came on the back of astute planning.

“I watched some clips of a preseason game between Rusea’s and St Elizabeth Technical and the game [on Saturday] unfolded as we expected it to,” he said.

“We were better on the day and deserved the win,” he added while acknowledging that Anchovy’s playing field is smaller than at some other venues.

Anchovy is one of the so-called minnows to have made good starts — Discovery Bay High and Troy High had their first wins in the daCosta Cup this season.

Discovery Bay, who only started playing last season when they earned one point in a 2-2 result against Ferncourt High, got their maiden win last week after outscoring Muschett High 3-2.

Troy had earned a point in the 2017 competition, but lost all 10 games played in 2018 — the last time they had entered the competition. On Saturday they defeated Alston High 3-2 for their first victory at this level.

Anchovy High’s Maliek Stephenson