Williams shines as Excelsior get past St Catherine

Defending champions Excelsior High School continued their impressive run in the ISSA/Manning Cup second round with a polished 3-1 victory over St Catherine High School at the Stadium East field yesterday.

Excelsior were led to victory by a brace from Damarlie Williams, who scored in the 35th and 61st minutes. Habbie Mohammed also found the back of the net in the 16th minute while Taray Harvey scored St Catherine’s consolation goal two minutes into the second half.

Head coach of Excelsior Keon Broderick was pleased with the result, stating that his players had achieved their main objective although he believes that there are still areas of their game that need improvement.

“I thought it was a good victory because the objective was to get three points to qualify for the next round, and the boys did exactly that,” said Broderick. “Of course, there are always areas that need improvement, and we are just going to go back and look at the areas that we need to improve on and improve on them.”

Brodericki was, however, unhappy that his team conceded a goal.

“At this stage of the competition we want to limit the number of goals that we concede because we don’t want it to become a trend,” he said.

Excelsior started confidently, moving the ball swiftly across the field and pinning St Catherine deep inside their defensive third. Their early dominance paid off in the 16th minute when Mohammed dribbled past two defenders before firing home from close range.

They then doubled their advantage in the 36th minute when Williams unleashed a powerful right-footed strike from about 20 yards, sending the ball rocketing past the goalkeeper to give Excelsior a 2-0 lead at half-time.

St Catherine came out with renewed purpose after the break and reduced the deficit in the 47th minute when Harvey pounced on a loose ball inside the penalty area and fired home from close range.

However, Excelsior restored their two-goal cushion in the 61st minute when Williams arrived at the back post to turn home a cross from Mohammed and complete his brace.

Vassell Reynolds, head coach of St Catherine, said his young team had performed reasonably well against the more experienced and talented Excelsior outfit.

“I thought we did fairly well for the most part. We had a plan going into the game, but to some extent, our inexperience was always going to work against us,” Reynolds said.

He noted that his players improved after the interval and remained competitive until Excelsior scored their third goal.

“We did a bit better in the second half than we did in the first because we got back a goal. We were always in the game until we conceded that third goal in the latter part of the second half,” Reynolds said.