St Leonard’s Boys’ captured their second consecutive Coca-Cola Barbados Secondary Schools’ Football League Under-14 title yesterday.
Playing at the National Stadium, the lads from Richmond Gap, St Michael, defeated Queen’s College 2-1 in a keenly contested final.
St Leonard’s were looking to dominate from as early as possible and QC goalkeeper Di Jon Hunte was kept busy in the first ten minutes.
QC appeared to have no response to this early intent shown by their opponents and in the 20th minute they paid the price, as St Leonard’s main striker Thierry Gale blasted a shot past Hunte.
Four minutes later, midfielder Jaron Oughterson rubbed salt into QC’s wounds?with another shot that beat Hunte.
In the second half, although not able to continue finding the nets, St Leonard’s still looked the more dangerous side as they maintained the majority of possession. However, QC did have their moment as midfielder Samuel Alkins pulled back a goal to ensure his team didn’t go down without at least something on the board.
In injury time, Alkins had an opportunity to equalise but he muffed the chance, leaving St Leonard’s to celebrate.
“It feels great to win,” said triumphant coach Fabian Massiah. “The guys were champions from last year so they defended their championship. We were confident coming into the game.”
He said the plan was basically the same as for the semi-finals – “possession, spreading the ball wide and attacking down the flanks”.
Earlier, Alexandra earned third place with a 2-1 win against Combermere.
Javier Nedd provided their first goal just before the end of the first half in the 25th minute and striker Tafari Bishop made it 2-0 in the 49th. Striker Christian John scored a consolation goal for Combermere in the second minute of injury time.
