Spoiler alert! Sandals intend to fight to the end
Sandals South Coast FC coach, Aaron ‘Wild Boy’ Lawrence, warned other teams battling for a play-off spot that despite his club being relegated from the Red Stripe Premier League (RSPL) with five round of matches to go, they intend to play the role of ‘spoilers’ before the regular season is out.
The Westmoreland club lost their place in the league from the previous week, however, in their last game against Waterhouse, they played as if their survival depended on it, even taking a first-half lead through Claudius Blackburn.
However, goals from Kemar Beckford and Cardel Benbow overturned the deficit with 10 minutes gone in the second half, and Lawrence himself was quite animated on the touchline, as he urged his team on for the equaliser. The former national goalkeeper told STAR Sports that it is going to be like that for all the teams they will face in their remaining four matches.
“Waterhouse played like true champions,” he said. “They have experience, and Duckie is a good coach. Both (teams’) players played well. We kept fighting, we pushed them back, never say die, never gave up, and we just have to give credit to our players,” he said.
“We started off well (against Waterhouse), then we fell off and then picked it up again. But there is nothing to be ashamed of. We have nothing to feel bad about. We came and gave a good show, even when we were down, we were still fighting,” he continued.
“Because the players are committed and they will fight, we will not stop. We have four more games to go and we are going to fight everybody like this. We are going to be spoilers in this competition, because we will play some people hard and we will stop some people from going places,” he stated. In their next game tomorrow, Sandals face 10th-place Humble Lion (38 points), who are still in contention for a top-six place. They then take on Boys’ Town in a clash of the relegated clubs, before going up against sixthplace hopefuls UWI (39) in their penultimate game. They will close out their fixture against fellow parish team, FC Reno (39).