CATHERINE HALL, St James — Jermaine Douglas knows he has his work cut out if Chapelton Maroons are to avoid a second one-season stay in the Jamaica Premier League. But he says he needs more depth if the promoted Clarendon-based team are to survive a second drop in three seasons.

Douglas took over the team in early December, replacing Oneil “Bigga” Thompson as coach and has since taken them off the foot of the table, into mid-table ‘safety’ but says they have a long way to go before they can start to feel comfortable.

After what he said was “one session” before his first game as coach, which they lost 2-1 to Vere United in a Clarendon derby, Chapelton Maroons went on a three-game unbeaten run, picking up seven points with wins over Cavalier FC and Harbour View and a draw against Arnett Gardens before they were brought back to Earth, giving up a 1-0 lead to lose 2-1 to Montego Bay United at the Montego Bay Sports Complex on Sunday.

After 16 games they are in eighth place on 16 points, 10 points from the top six play-off spots and just four points above the relegation zone.

While he was disappointed with the way his team lost on Sunday, he said he has faith they can compete.

“As you can see, we do need reinforcement. We can compete with any team in this competition, we just need reinforcements, we need more depth in the team, Montego Bay United is a very good team but we came and we gave a good account of ourselves,” Douglas argued.

He told the Jamaica Observer he had an idea of the type of players he had in mind and has spoken to the management of the club.

“We see some areas that we need to plug and we’re looking at some players, so hopefully we can get those across the line and we can add something,” Douglas said. “I’ve been talking to management to get through to some players and hopefully we can get it done.”

Chapelton Maroons created waves two season’s ago when they qualified for the Jamaica Premier League along with Falkland FC of St James but both teams went right back to the Jamaica Football Federation’s Championships, the second-tier club competition.

Chapelton Maroons’ demise was helped in large part after they were docked six points for not being prepared to host Mount Pleasant FA in a first-round game.

Douglas said the first order of business is to secure their place and avoid going back into the ‘dog-eat-dog’ lower half of the points table.

“When I took over the team, we were at the foot of the table, so that was the first objective; we have moved away from there. We wanted to keep moving forward, we wanted to keep moving up the table and see where that takes us,” he said.

Asked if he felt they had already achieved some safety, he was quick to distance himself from that kind of thinking.

“We are never safe, we keep moving and we can never say we are safe, the teams are tightly bunched in the bottom half of the table and anything can happen there, so we cannot start thinking we are safe,” he said.