Halliman promises Excelsior win tomorrow
Expect an improved performance from Excelsior High School when the Lebert Halliman-coached unit face Dunoon Park Technical High School tomorrow.
Halliman believes that last week’s opening game loss to Kingston College will be a springboard to success against Dunoon.
“I don’t like to say this but we’re going to win this one,”said the coach who returned to the seven-times Manning Cup champion school as technical director in time for the 2019 schoolboy football season. “I think the beating by KC sent the message and open up their eyes. We’re definitely going to win on Saturday.”
Excelsior, 1998 champion school Dunoon, and 2018 winner Kingston College are all in group G of the Manning Cup preliminary round alongside Cedar Grove Academy, Kingston Technical, and Pembroke Hall High.
Excelsior’s last Manning Cup successes came under Halliman’s guidance in 2003 and 2004 to add to wins in 1953, 1969, 1980, 1989 and 1993. According to the veteran
coach, discipline will be the platform for more titles. “It’s refreshing, glad to be back home but it is more work than before because I’ve laid the foundation before I went away and on return, it has been destroyed and I have to start all over again,”he said.
BOTTOM OF THE BARREL
He reckons that a nationwide decline in discipline is the main culprit. “The discipline is at the bottom, bottom of the barrel, the pride has gone, the commitment in all areas. It is not nice to say these things but it’s very difficult to pick up something positive and it hurts, hurts, hurts, hurts, hurts,”he bemoaned. “When you listen to the teachers and the problem they’re having, this is not Excelsior.”
Now, in his third stint as head of the school’s football programme, he has set his sights on helping. Accordingly, his target isn’t solely focused on football. “My first task is not really to win Manning Cup. That is secondary. One is to put back the school where discipline and pride is concerned and that’s my theme and objective, first and foremost,” he said.