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KFC Goodwill Football tourney…Annai Secondary clinch Championship in style
By Calvin Chapman
Play between Waramadong (possession) and Shiva boys’ during last night’s third place playoff.
The anticipated final of the second annual KFC Goodwill football tournament for under-18 secondary school teams saw Annai Secondary that travelled all the way from Region Nine, defeating Lodge Secondary comfortably 2-0 last night at the Ministry of Education (MOE) ground, Carifesta Avenue, to go down in history as the second team to win this Petra Organisation promoted tournament.
The match kicked off about 30 minutes later than its scheduled 19:00hrs start due to the tardiness of a match official but from the first whistle, Annai looked ominous; getting in behind Lodge’s back line with ease on numerous occasions.
Junior Rodrigues, who was adjudged Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the tournament at last night’s presentation ceremony at the same venue, fired the champions ahead in the 20th minute of the match with a thundering volley from a rebound during a corner set-piece. By that time, Annai could’ve easily been at least three goals up.
Two minutes later, Niaaz Mohamed, after being played through on goal and dribbling a sprinting defender, he netted a banging, low shot that beat Lodge’s Rashad ‘Shadow’ Roberts to his left from just outside the box to double his team’s lead.
Those two goals proved satisfactory for the win but the match heated up afterwards with Annai dominating the entire proceeding. Lodge would have been disappointed after beating the defending champions Shiva boy’s Hindu College in Friday’s semifinal but they didn’t play scrappily.
The Lodge lads bombarded through balls, mainly from defence, into their opposition’s half but the sturdy back line of Annai’s headed and cleared almost everything thrown at them with much ease.
On the other side of the pitch, Annai played with maturity, knocking the ball around, interchanging possession with various ‘triangle’ link ups; often allowing the wide men to be left unmarked for menacing runs into the final third. And, when they decided to go through the middle, Annai’s midfielders made little mistakes with their passes, something that Lodge Secondary and their target-man Dorwin George didn’t benefit from.
In the third place playoff earlier in the evening’s play, Shiva boys’ made light work of DC Caesar Fox (Waramadong) Secondary 3-1. The tournament’s highest goal scorer, Adica Ash, continued his purple patch with a brace in the playoff to add to Stephen Thomas’ opener in the 15th minute.
Ovid Andrews had equalised for the student-athletes from region seven in the 55th minute but Ash had lulled the celebrations of the massive and partisan Waramadong supporters with a penalty, the first of his brace, one minute later before taking the match out of the losers’ grasp with his second in the 89th minute.
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