DEERRNodley Wright, Staff Reporter
COACH LENWORTH Hyde did not reach his target of a 100 per cent win record in the second round of the Wray and Nephew National Premier League but his goal of getting into the end of round final was achieved.
With that in the bag it is now the task of the form team of the first part of the second round to beat Waterhouse, the team which finished the round blazing.
They meet in the final today at the Tony Spaulding Sports complex in a 4:00 p.m. feature. Their game will be preceded at 2:00 p.m. by the Under-21 end of second round final between Arnett Gardens and Tivoli Gardens.
Besides a trophy, up for grabs for Waterhouse and Hazard are three bonus points for the winners and one for the losers plus prize money of $150,000 for the victors and $75,000 for the vanquished.
"We are confident that we can beat this team. We just have to go out there and play our brand of football, get back on track and play what we used to play in the earlier stages," said Hyde whose team only managed two points from their last four games after winning the first seven in impressive fashion for the second round.
Interestingly, the first of two teams to beat them was Waterhouse.
"We know that the Waterhouse team are a very good team and the coach is working wonders with them. So we know that it's going to be hard. It's going to be an intense game and we'll be pressing hard from when the whistle blows," said Hyde of the upcoming contest.
Waterhouse's coach, Calvert Fitzgerald, believes his team's task will be made difficult by a heavy workload over the past two weeks and especially after last Wednesday when they played more than 120 minutes of football before heading into penalties in order to beat Tivoli Gardens in the Jackie Bell Knock Out.
Hazard were fortunate enough not to be involved as they do not fall under the Kingston and St Andrew Football Association (KSAFA).
"It's going to be a very tough game because we played a very hard game on Wednesday against Tivoli and we only had two days to recover," said Fitzgerald who added, "Hazard are the fittest team in the league, very well conditioned and they also have a lot of national players so they must be a very dangerous side."
National players aside, eight of whom were invited to a national squad on Friday, Fitzgerald believes his group of fighters will emerge victorious. "I think we're going to win the game based on the fact that Hazard are a very predictable team, you know what they are going to do," he said.
Because of this supposed predictability "planning strategies and tactics against Hazard is not a very difficult thing to do", according to Fitzgerald.
"The difficulty is that even though you know what they're going to do, it's not easy to stop them from doing it," he conceded.
Waterhouse are only one of three teams to do so this season but coach Hyde does not expect a repeat. He believes his team's slump is behind it and coupled with that is the return of key players.
"Most of our players are back from injury," he said.
Among them are the outstanding goalkeeper Shawn Sawyers and Wolry Wolfe who sat out three games on suspension. The exciting midfielder Omar Daley is still nursing a knee injury and should not feature.
The strike pair of the provider Kevin Deerr and the finisher Roen Nelson, the competition's leading scorer, should be fresh and ready. Backing them up will be the Grenadian Anthony Modeste, Claude Davis and Tyrone Sawyers.
"We want to win this game and get these three (bonus) points ... We've never been here before and we want to win it for the first time," said Hyde whose team lost out on the last day of the last round.
"Because we started badly in the first round, we've to be playing catch up," said Fitzgerald who will be counting on captain Irvino English, who leads by example.
Other key players include Damion Powell, Damion Williams, the hard-running Roberto Fletcher and the goalkeeper be it Loxley Reid or Gregory Hall.
