KINGSTON, Jamaica -Craig Butler dissected the first half of Mona High’s ISSA Champions Cup game against champions Clarendon College into three to explain how it is that his team lost in their debut performance in the competition at Sabina Park on Saturday.

Mona High went down 1-3 to Clarendon College with the first two goals coming in the 18th and 31st minutes.

“If you really look at the first half, if you break it down in thirds, in the first third we really had the better of play. A mistake from our goalkeeper happened around the end of that first third in the 18th minute and it caused us to panic a little bit.

“The second goal came in a similar situation but the truth of it is Clarendon won, they played well, they played to their game plan, and they won,” he explained.

Butler was gracious in defeat and complemented his opposition coach for what his team was able to achieve.

“Congratulations to the team, congratulations to Lenny and I believe that they are doing a great job at Clarendon, I think they are a formidable team.”

Butler has promised to learn from the loss, while expressing disappointment in some of his senior players.

“Success is the summation of many small failures and so you will learn. We will learn from it and come again.

“A 14-year-old and a 15-year-old had the most heart on the pitch. I am disappointed in my players, tremendously disappointed, because they did not play with the heart that I know they can.

“They did not play and believe and fight in the system that I know they can, and they can do better, so I am telling them they need to do better, I need to do better, so we will see what we do against JC,” he said.

Butler suggested that his players may not have learned the lessons from the Manning Cup loss to Kingston College (KC).

“It looks like KC wasn’t enough for them. I don’t mind ending my season early and going on vacation and relaxing and taking “Whisper” up to Genk. But for me I want to see these boys do well and I know what it takes to go all the way.”

The Mona head coach said his boys failed to recover quickly enough from the errors made in the first half.

“At this stage it’s not who has the most skills or who can kick the ball the best or who can dribble, it’s who wants it more. It’s as simple as that. Who’s not going to give up when things fall. It’s not how many times you fall, it’s how many times you get up. Today we didn’t get up fast enough.,” he argued.

Mona High’s season may be defined by the next 90 minutes of football they play when they come face to face with Jamaica College, the only other unbeaten team in schoolboy football, in the Manning Cup semi finals on Tuesday.