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Coach Carney aims to put football in spotlight at Denbigh

Published:Saturday | September 21, 2024 | 12:09 AMRaymond Graham/Gleaner Writer
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Clarendon College’s Dante Walters (left) tries to get away from Denbigh High’s Odaine Thompson during the opening match of the ISSA/WATA daCosta Cup football competition at the Montego Bay Sports Complex on Saturday, September 7.
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Clarendon College’s Dante Walters (left) tries to get away from Denbigh High’s Odaine Thompson during the opening match of the ISSA/WATA daCosta Cup football competition at the Montego Bay Sports Complex on Saturday, September 7.
Garfield Carney, coach of Denbigh High.
Contributed
Garfield Carney, coach of Denbigh High.
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Head coach of the Denbigh High School football team, Garfield Carney, is hoping that the school will emerge as one of the top teams in the ISSA daCosta Cup competition this year.

The school has, over the years, done very well in netball and has won many rural and all-island titles but coach Carney now wants to put football in the spotlight.

Carney is very confident that the school’s daCosta Cup team will be a real force in the 2024 competition and will produce their best ever performance.

In their opening match of the season, Denbigh gave a gutsy display against last year’s daCosta Cup winners and all-island champions Clarendon College and lost 2-1.

Since then the team has been on a roll as in their next two matches they had convincing wins over Claude McKay High and Edwin Allen High after getting by their opponents 5-0 and 5-1 respectively.

Carney is in his second stint at the helm of the school’s football programme. His first came between 2003 and 2013 before he returned in 2022.

“I have unfinished business as in my first stint I was told that the results were not good enough and I was relieved of the job but coming back I am highly motivated and being familiar with the programme, I expect much better results this time,” he stated.

Despite doing well at the under-14 and under-16 levels which includes two finals in the latter competition, the senior team is yet to reach the second round of the daCosta Cup.

“I think last year we did very well in a very tough group where we lost out narrowly in our final game against Glenmuir High,” said Carney.

Now drawn in Zone H alongside the likes of Clarendon College, Central High, Lennon High and Edwin Allen where three teams will advance from the group he is very optimistic that his team will be one of the three.

“At this stage the focus is to win our remaining matches and the guys are pumped up to do so. We really have an experienced group as we have retained nine players from last year’s squad including four starters,” said Carney who named midfielder Odane Thompson and centre forwards Devore Wynter and Lashacan Barnaby who scored a hat trick in their last game against Edwin Allen, as his main players.