STATHS rebuilding with young team
PHILLIP WILLIAMS, head coach of the 2019 beaten Manning Cup finalists, St Andrew Technical High School (STATHS), said he expects his team to be very competitive this season, despite the fact they have not retained any of their players from two seasons ago.
Williams told The Gleaner that none of the players on their current roster has ever played in the Manning Cup before and therefore the plan is to rebuild the team for the next two seasons.
“It is a very young squad that we have and they just want to play some football and get some Manning Cup experience and then we can plan for the next season,” said Williams.
“No player on this team has ever played in the Manning Cup before. This team is made up of the 2019 Under-14 team and so it is total rebuilding for us,” he said.
However, we have some very good players and exciting players and they will be producing some very good football this season,” Williams said. “But if they leave the group this season will be a plus for us.”
Williams pointed out that their preparations going into this season have been poor because of COVID19 restrictions and a lot of players were not training properly.
“It (preparation) is very inadequate based on what we have been doing over the three seasons,” said Williams. “We just started training about six weeks now and so this is not sufficient time for us to really prepare the way that want to, but we are happy that football is back.”
STATHS were beaten 5-4 on penalties by Jamaica College, this after both teams had played out to a 0-0 draw at full and extra time.
Williams stated that his youngsters have shown a lot of quality and if they remain together over the next two seasons, they will be very difficult to beat in the future.
“We always trained to be competitive, but in terms of expectations, my plans for this team is for the 2022-2023 season. It is all about getting the guys some experience playing in the Manning Cup and see what it is like and then we will push on from here into the future,” Williams said.