ST Catherine High School football team Head Coach Anthony Patrick says that if all goes well they should make their presence felt throughout the 2022 ISSA/Digicel Manning Cup competition.

This came after St Catherine, the reigning Walker Cup champions, drew 0-0 with Jamaica College (JC) in their Group B game at Spanish Town Prison Oval on Friday.

St Catherine are third in the group on four points, the same as JC who are second with a better goal difference.

The top two teams from each group, along with the four next best third-place finishers, will advance to the next round of competition.

Patrick says that their first goal is to advance from the group stages of the competition and then build on that momentum into the next round.

“It [drawing with Jamaica College] augurs well for the team,” he told the Jamaica Observer. “I had expected a game like this from speaking to the youngsters the last two sessions and today [Friday] we had a lengthy discussion in a meeting with them, and they were very upbeat for this one and definitely came out and proved that on the pitch.

“It is important that we try to come out of the zone first. The next match [against leaders St Jago] is going to be a tough one again, and we are up for it. We have a good team and we are expecting the players to do well.”

It was expected to be both teams’ toughest game of the group stage, and so it proved as neither JC nor St Catherine were able to ignite any spark in the first half. St Catherine looked the better outfit in terms of attacking as they had more shots at the target.

In the second half St Catherine gave up most of the ball possession but came close to tasting victory on numerous occasions as many shots from close range failed to hit the net.

“I am very pleased with the team’s performance,” Patrick said. “We played a brilliant first half; the second half, JC started to run at us in the first 10 to 15 minutes as they made a lot of changes and brought on a lot of players — but we had asked the senior players we had out there to dig deep.

“They had a lot of niggling injuries but we asked them to dig deep before we introduced a couple of youngsters into the game — some were 14 and 15 years old — to finish off the game. They did well, and I am happy with that.”