By Carlena Knight
Head Coach of defending champions, PIC Liberta Blackhawks, Rowan “Porridge” Benjamin, says he is quite satisfied with his team’s ongoing performance.
The Blackhawks continued their winnings way on Sunday beating Cool and Smooth Global Bank of Commerce AC Delco Greenbay Hoppers 4-2 in the feature encounter of the triple-header evening.
Captain Lennox “Fox” Julian was a goal shy of a hattrick for the victors scoring in the 38th and 74th minutes. Romario Braithwaite and Avier Christian also found the back of the net.
Hoppers remain second with 19 points.
This moves their winning streak to four straight, and into the third position with 15 points.
“It’s a good feeling to be winning matches and especially coming off of this break because it is very difficult to be on a roll before you go into the break and then have to break and have to build the players back again, and I think they responded very well yesterday.”
Although he commended the players on a job well done, Benjamin still believes that a few adjustments are needed.
“Well actually the area that we think that we really have to tighten at this present moment is our defense. I really would have thought that our defense would be our strongest area. Scoring four goals yesterday, it means then that we are now starting to see the front runners scoring goals, but we are letting in goals and I’m not very happy about that, so it is something that we have to go back to the field and work hard at,” he said.
Sandals INET Grenades moved to the top of the 10-team standings with 22 points after edging NNL Distributors Swetes, 3-2.
Gregson President (25th), Antonio Joseph (51st) and Stefan Smith (71st) were the goal-scorers for the ‘round south’ team, while Rakeem Henry (6th) and Tiquan Isaac (58th) hit home for Swetes.
Head Coach, Derrick “Pretty Boy” Edwards spoke on his team’s performance.
“Any coach would be happy to be in this position right now, but at the end of the day, it’s not over and we can’t get too complacent, we can’t get too ahead of ourselves. We have to stay grounded and we got to keep going on the pitch and train hard, be disciplined and be dedicated for the game.”
The former national player says his hardest task now is keeping players motivated.
“I think my hardest job right now is to keep them focused. Keep them believing in themselves. Keep them in a state of mind that it’s not all over and basically keep them in a way that they would understand that it is an opportunity for us to create history and to create history you have to work harder than everyone else.” Swetes, after the loss to Grenades, slipped to 6th with 12 points.