Kwesi Mugisa, Staff Reporter

Calabar High's captain and hat-trick scorer, Cleyon Brown (centre), raises his hand while celebrating one of his goals with teammates, during yesterday's Walker Cup football final against Jamaica College at the National Stadium. Calabar won 3-0. - Ian Allen/Staff Photographer

Calabar High School's senior football team captain, Cleyon Brown, described yesterday's hat-trick performance, which led his team to a 3-0 win over Jamaica College (JC), in the the SSA/Pepsi/Digicel Walker Cup final, as his crowning moment in schoolboy football.

"Now, I really think that I have achieved all that I can as a schoolboy footballer, not only winning the Walker Cup but with a hat-trick in the final," the elated striker said.

Brown had already won both the Manning Cup and Olivier Shield titles in the 2005-06 season under recently deceased coach, David Hunt, but certainly put in a memorable performance, netting in the 39th, 53rd and 81st minutes to add the missing title to his collection.

Missed opportunity

Resolved to lift their first Walker Cup and to break a 33-year drought in the knockout competition, it was JC which began the game with the better of the play.

Ramone Palmer missed a golden opportunity to open the scoring against his former team when his 20th minute attempt to lob goal-keeper Oliver Walker did not have enough pace on the attempt.

Palmer did put the ball in the net five minutes later, but he was adjudged to have been offside.

Brown ensured that JC would pay for their early mistake when he fired past Walker from the edge of the 18-yard area. On the counter Brown effectively killed the game off when he broke away from a JC back line caught in attack mode and coolly rolled the ball wide of the JC keeper.

After a stroke of luck which saw the ball bounce kindly to him in the midst of his opponents, Brown made the best of the situation, using skill and power to get past three defenders before kicking the shot, which took a deflection and lifted over the head of Walker.

"I told Cleyon that if we were going to win today, he would have to lead the way and he did," said Calabar coach Lijyasu Simms.

"We knew we had to win today, no matter what the conditions we had to do it for David Hunt. They played like lions," he said.

'Will rebound'

Jamaica College's manager, Ian Forbes, was disappointed with the loss but says he predicted that they would rebound.

"I'm certainly very disappointed but all credit to Calabar, they came to win," he said. "We came to win as well but we deviated from the path a bit, but will pick up the pieces, look at what went wrong and get ready for the Manning Cup."