Digicel Schools’ Football Championships... Top three Captains react following final day’s play

Digicel Schools’ Football Championships… Top three Captains react following final day’s play

Aug 02, 2017 Sports

By Franklin Wilson

The top three Captains emerging from the 7th edition of the Digicel Schools’ Football Championships, Jeremy Garrett of Chase Academy, Annai’s Neston Browne and Waramadong’s Frank Francis gave their reaction to their teams performance following the final day of action on Sunday last.
Chase Academy, led by Jeremy Garrett in his final year retained the coveted championship trophy for the second consecutive year following a 6-2 win over Annai which was led by Neston Browne, also playing in his final year of the championship.
Following six years and as many losses to Christianburg, Waramadong was finally able to break the losing jinx against the Linden side when they whipped them 3-1 in the third place match rallied on by a crowd of over 3000 spectators at the Leonora Track and Field Facility, Leonora, West Coast Demerara.
Garrett first give thanks to the Almighty God for the victory which he noted was good not only for himself but for the school.
”Most of the players, this is their last Digicel championship and it was an honour to represent well for Chase Academy. The victory was overwhelming and we are thankful.”
The eloquent and confident Garrett said that many of the players would now be focused on the various national teams during the coming months and hopes to produce better.
Noting that his belief is that football is played on the day, Garrett who at the beginning of this year’s championship had stated that Annai would have been their biggest threat felt that his opponent did not have a good game on championship night.
” I don’t think that Annai had a good game tonight but Chase Academy had a wonderful game, the midfielders, especially Ryan Hackett, Rondel Peters and my younger brother Jermaine, those three guys stood out tonight.”
Garrett further noted he felt Annai would have been their biggest threat given the tough nature of their quarter final match last year in Lethem which Chase won 2-1.
”I thought that this year, Annai had the same team and they would have given us a tougher fight than any other team.”
Looking ahead to the 2018 championship and possibly seeing Chase winning the championship for the third year in a row, this was Garrett’s reaction:
”At Chase Academy we normally give out scholarships to youngsters who are excelling at football but who are inner driven for academics as well. So it’s no doubt that we would have new players coming in to fill in our spaces, I must say that most of the guys that are not returning this year are heading out to big things.”
He revealed that Ryan Hackett is set to take up a scholarship in the USA, while he himself will be returning to Portugal next week or the other week but most of the guys have good things ahead.
”Chase Academy is always dominant and we will come out and showcase another three-peat next year.”
Annai’s Captain Browne, whilst complimenting his colleagues for playing a good game pointed out that many of them were not accustomed to playing under lights which was a disadvantage for them.
”We had a nice game though, I like how the game was played, Chase played a good game but at the end we lost.”
Browne, stated that the school came with one spirit to win but that didn’t work out whilst also mentioning that he wanted to do it in this his final year as a player in the competition.
”Three, four goals hard to get back, can’t come back like that, so we just had to play an easy game and that was it.”
Waramadong’s Frank Francis said that they tried their best in the semi finals but something went wrong and they lost what has gone down in history as the greatest comeback in the championships where Annai erased a four-goal deficit to beat them 7-5 in injury time.
”For the third place we still didn’t give up because for the past six years Christianburg has been beating us in the semi finals and finals but now we made up our minds to defeat them this year. We had confidence in ourselves that we would win.”
It’s now back to enjoying the remainder of the school holidays and then refocusing on academics before strategising for the 2018 edition of the Digicel Schools’ Football Championships.

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