Rural coaches praise Junior Cup U-11

With the Junior Cup U-11 competition coming to a grand finale last Saturday with the all-island finals at the Constant Spring Sports Complex, coaches from the rural areas of Jamaica have called for more youth development in their respective parishes.

The Junior Cup All-Island finals was contested between the top four teams from each of the three regional competitions which were held across the previous weekends.

One such team was Port Antonio Primary School, led by head coach Kirk-Patrick Osbourne.

Port Antonio were the only team outside of the Corporate Area to make it to the top four of the all-island finals. They were defeated in the semi-finals by eventual champions Hillel Academy.

Osbourne said he was not surprised by his team’s performance, as this crop of players have been playing together since the first grade.

“It is really a testimony to our hard work. We have been working for some years now, and the boys have been playing together from grade one,” he explained.

Osbourne praised the Junior Cup initiative as he believes it provides a platform for young players to develop their talent in an organised and competitive environment.

He believes it is also important, especially as several grassroots football programmes in Jamaica often overlook the talent in Portland due to an overemphasis on players in Kingston and the wider Corporate Area.

“I think it is very important,” he said. “It is unfortunate that we don’t have more of these in our neck of the woods. We had to play in Ocho Rios last year and we were regional champions then, and we went to Montego Bay this year.

“I would be happy if we could have it in Portland some of the times, because it is good for the youngsters to be in organised football from this tender age. We do it for track and field, but we don’t do it for any other sport in Jamaica, and this is where it all begins. We have to get the youngsters working and learning the rudimentals of the game from a tender age.”

Another coach who echoed those sentiments was Ricardo Esmie, head coach of Corinaldi Avenue Primary School, based in St James.

Corinaldi, who were last season’s champions, made it to the quarter-finals of the competition this time around before being edged 1-0 by Liberty Academy.

Esmie said the Junior Cup is an important stop in their sporting calendar and has called for more programmes to focus on schools in rural Jamaica.

“It is a tremendous feeling to be here,” he said. “We are a competitive school, so coming all the way to Kingston, we knew we would face a challenge. The team slipped up a little bit, so we have to just go back to the drawing board and get ourselves ready again.”

Esmie added: “I think there needs to be a wider variety of parishes represented because when you’re in Kingston, the focus will mostly be on Kingston schools.”