Cornwall, Clarendon in daCosta Final combat

The battle for rural area supremacy heats up in the ISSA/WATA daCosta Cup final when Cornwall College take on Clarendon College in what will see a clash of the CCs in their quest to reveal the real 'mCCoy'.

The match is set to kick off at 6 p.m. in the Montego Bay Sports Complex, this evening, where Cornwall, playing in their own backyard, will be looking to take confidence from their historic ISSA Champions Cup win there last week.

Clarendon will be looking to have their revenge on Cornwall, who knocked them out of both the daCosta Cup and the Champions Cup (formerly the Super Cup) in 2016 when they last met each other. However, Cornwall also has some avenging to do, as the last time both teams met in a daCosta final, Clarendon College walked away 1-0 victors in 1998.

Both teams share 19 daCosta Cup titles, with Cornwall holding the record at 12 with their last coming in 2016.

Lenworth Hyde, coach of Clarendon, is aware that it will be no easy task against the only unbeaten team in schoolboy football this season. He is also hunting his first daCosta Cup title as a coach in the same year that the of the passing of Winston Chung-Fah, the coach that lead him to this title as a player. This is extra motivation for him.

Doing it for Chung-fah

"He (Chung-Fah) started it so we have to just do this for him. The players are buying into it, they walked with his picture (last week) and will do so (today) also. Winning the title is a boost for them to do something for Chung-Fah," said Hyde.

"It's going to be a tough game but we are looking forward to playing against a good Cornwall team. It will come down to who executes on the day and who makes the least amount of mistakes. We have to be vigilant, disciplined and courageous out there as well as enjoy the moment.

Clarendon will be looking to key players Nicque Daley, Lamar Walker and Ricardo McIntosh who are all national youth representatives.

"They have to come with their A-game, because to win, your star players have to perform. They have to go out and lead from the front, because the team will feed off how good they play," Hyde said.

Cornwall College's coach, Dr Dean Weatherly has his eyes set on the historic treble this season, by winning the daCosta Cup to advance to the Olivier Shield to add to the Champions Cup. He is however aware of what is at stake and what they need to do to write their names in history.

Back-and-forth affair

"We know it's going to be a back and forth affair, an end to end battle, and will come down to who wants it most. It will take both team and individual resilience to withstand the pressure of the fans and emphasis placed on this game," said Weatherly.

"This is not just an everyday final. This is the battle of the CCs, as they say, mid-Jamaica verse Western Jamaica, one where there is a revenge factor from two years ago creeping in and also the 1998 finals where we lost 1-0 to them," he added.

"We don't want a recurrence of that. Cornwall College is on a path to create history and don't want them to be stopping us."