Munro and Ocho Rios meet in d’Cup quarter-finals

MUNRO, St Elizabeth — Both Munro College and Ocho Rios High have expressed confidence going into today’s delayed start of the quarter-finals of the ISSA/Wata daCosta Cup football competition at Munro, St Elizabeth, set to kick off at 3:00 pm.The quarter-finals were originally set to start on Tuesday but the passage of Tropical Storm Rafael forced the organisers to push both the start of the daCosta Cup and Manning Cup competitions back a few days.The other three games in the first set of matches will be played tomorrow while the round will continue on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week and end on Saturday.Both teams playing today are getting to this stage of the competition for the first time in an extended period, Munro — 17 years and Ocho Rios, eight, and Kemar Ricketts, the Munro College head coach, said today’s game was “the most important three points” of the round, while the Ocho Rios High manager Eyan Kean said his team was “oozing with confidence.”While both schools say they welcomed the additional time between the end of the Round of 16 on Saturday and the start of the quarter-finals, both also told the Jamaica Observer yesterday they understood they had to get off to a winning start if they were to stay in contention for a semi-final berth and a place in the first round of the ISSA Cup.The top two teams from each of the four groups in the Round of 16 qualified for the quarter-finals where they were further separated into two groups of four teams.The top two teams from each group after three games will make progress while the others would play in the quarter-finals of the Ben Francis Cup.Ricketts, who left BB Coke High last year to take up the Munro College job, said today’s game would set the tone for what is to come next.“Getting off to a good start is very important, the most important three points of the round as it helps to set the stage,” Ricketts said before touching on the importance of starting in a familiar environment. “Playing at home is an advantage that you want to make full use of.”Ricketts, who had the luxury of resting a number of his top players in Saturday’s tepid 0-0 draw against Frome Technical after they had secured qualification to the last eight, said they used the unplanned extended break well.“The team is good to go, the extended break helped in more ways than one, we were able to recuperate and re-energise and to work on some things that we need to do,” he said.Kean told the Jamaica Observer, they were looking to make the most of the opportunity.“[We are] fully aware we had not been to the stage of the competition for a long time, since 2016, but we intend to make full use of the opportunity and we have to start well...[We are] aware of Munro College’s attacking prowess but we have one of the best defensive teams left in the competition,” said Kean.He added that his team was well balanced and equipped to deal with the challenge.“We are equally potent at the attacking end. The team is oozing with confidence, Glenmuir High was our biggest challenge and we went there and were not embarrassed, so we are ready for the game,” he added.