Camperdown undeterred by unseeded tag

Christopher Bender, head coach of Camperdown’s Manning Cup team, says they will not be affected either by the school’s rich sporting history or their unseeded status heading into the 2026 Manning Cup campaign.

Camperdown will begin their season in Zone A of the first round as one of the unseeded teams under the new schoolboy football format.

They will be joined in the zone by Meadowbrook High School, Jonathan Grant High, Holy Trinity High, Waterford High, Ascot High, Greater Portmore High, and Bridgeport High.

Camperdown is one of only two teams in the zone to have won the Manning Cup title, the other being Bridgeport.

However, despite boasting three Manning Cup titles, three Olivier Shield crowns, and two Walker Cup titles, Bender said the school currently deserves its unseeded status and that history will play no part for this generation of players.

“Listen, you are where you deserve to be. It’s not like they separate the teams by history long ago. It is how you performed the year before, so you are there on merit,” Bender explained.

“We don’t look back on whether we were champions of 1982 and triple champions. We don’t look at it that way.”

Bender continued: “How we look at it is that we are in a situation where we have to play and forget about history. We don’t make history determine what we do now.”

The new Manning Cup format will see unseeded teams compete in the first round, with the top teams from each zone advancing to the second round, where they will join the seeded schools.

ONE GAME AT A TIME

Although Bender admitted to having some concerns about the new format, he said the overall situation has not changed for his team.

He said they would approach the competition one game at a time, with the goal of progressing from the first round.

“The format is there, and we have to play it, and we’re approaching it game by game,” Bender said.

“The first expectation is to perform well, and the performance will determine where you go. It’s not about making lofty predictions about winning the Manning Cup.

“Our aim right now is to perform each game, and the performance will determine where we go.”

Bender said the team’s pre-season preparation started slowly, but he is confident that they can find their rhythm in time for the campaign.

Matriculation system

One of the key aspects of Camperdown’s programme is its matriculation system, through which key players from the younger age groups are invited to train with the Manning Cup squad.

He said the approach helps ease the transition to the Under-19 competition and ensures that the team maintains a core group of players who have been developing together for years.

“Our situation now is that we are slowly building our pre-season. It is not the best, but our first objective is to qualify one or two in this round to go to the next round,” he explained.

“What we do is to always have about 10 or eight of the Colts team players training with the Manning Cup team,” Bender continued.

“It is to help the transition from Colts. The Pepsi team does that as well so that transition will be a little easier in terms of personnel coming to Manning Cup.”

Camperdown last lifted the Manning Cup title in 1982, with Bender playing in midfield as the school secured the triple crown under veteran coach Patrick ‘Jackie’ Walters.

Bender is also no stranger to success at Camperdown, having previously guided the team to the Manning Cup quarterfinals in 2019.

He is hopeful that the team can once again reach those heights but acknowledged that the journey back to the top will be a challenging one.

gregory.bryce@gleanerjm.com