CC’s season has just begun – Weatherly

Western Bureau:

CORNWALL COLLEGE (CC) coach Dr Dean Weatherly said they have hit the reset button as they returned to winning ways with a 2-1 away win over Green Pond High School in their zone A Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) daCosta Cup football match yesterday.

Twelve-time champions, CC, who came into the game on the heels of back-to-back losses, produced a dominant first-half performance that eventually was enough to get them over the line.

It took Cornwall College 34 minutes and a penalty to break the deadlock that Deshawn Evans slotted to the right of Green Pond’s custodian, David Scott. This was the first penalty conversion of the season for Cornwall, who have now taken three.

Braxton Richards doubled the lead for the boys in red and gold six minutes later to give them a comfortable lead at the break.

Cornwall’s intensity dropped in the second half, memories of the team that lost to the same opposition at home two weeks prior rising to the fore.

The diminished energy meant Green Pond would net a deserved, even if only, consolation goal after Devoie Douglas sneaked in at the far post to tap in from close range on the end of a diagonal free kick.

PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERVENTION

According to Weatherly, psychological intervention is needed to get his team to consistently put in performances like they did in the first 45 minutes.

“Yes, it’s definitely a good result. Today is the first day of our season, and that’s the approach we are taking. We have four more games to put under our belt. This (campaign) is one where we can’t afford to drop a point. That is the position that we’ve put ourselves in where every game is a final,” said Weatherly

“We are going to do some psychological work with the boys because we have too much talent not to be showing our true mettle. After every game now we have to go back to the drawing board, see where we went wrong and try to tweak it,” he added.

On their performance, he continued: “In the second half I think we fell down a bit, but we did what was needed from the first half.”

Gregory Daley, coach of Green Pond, said while today’s result will impact them in a difficult Zone A, they just have to focus on winning their remaining games.

“The performance was not good enough. We wanted to start on the front foot but the guys started on the back foot. We started playing when the game got away from us, so we were always behind the eight ball. You saw coming to the end of the game, we picked up a lot of momentum and even scored, but two goals down was always going to be tough,” Daley said.

“Losing is always going to have an impact, especially in Zone A, however, we still maintain second place. All we need to do is carry home the other games and we will be safe,” he added.