Jamaica Gleaner | Ryan Jones

Harbour View’s young forward, Brian Brown, came in for high praise from his coach, Harold Thomas, after netting his first Red Stripe Premier League hat-trick to lead the defending champions to a 3-0 win over Cavalier in their rescheduled match played on Wednesday at Stadium East.

Brown headed home in the 60th and 71st minutes with both crosses coming from Xavian Virgo before completing his hat-trick in the 81st minute with a lob over Cavalier’s custodian, Jovel Plunkett. The goals moved the 20-year-old’s tally to six for the season with five coming in league play.

“He is a fantastic youngster; he listens, he works hard and the sky is the limit for Brian (Brown),” Thomas said of the former Rusea’s daCosta Cup standout. “A good young and true professional; he has a tremendous amount of growth potential; he just has to play to his instincts most of the time, because he has an eye for goal.”

unbeaten run

The win was Harbour View’s third on the trot and extended their unbeaten run to six games. It carried them to 17 points; two adrift of leaders Waterhouse (19). Cavalier remain sixth with 13 points.

Brown, who helped his former school to back-to-back daCosta titles in 2010 and 2011 has taken some time to make the transition to the Premier League but he is finding his footing in this his second season.

“When you leave the schoolboy level and come up to the big man level you have guys bigger, thicker, faster and more experienced than you, so you just have to do the hard work and hope that it will help you in the games,” Brown said.

Harbour View bossed possession for the majority of the game, but it was Cavalier that created the better scoring opportunities in the first half. Two such chances were badly missed by Girvan Brown and André Forbes.

“You fail to score, you’re going to lose and we got our goals early in the game and failed to score them, Harbour View got theirs late and scored,” Cavalier’s coach, David Laylor, expressed. “Also with that we made some bad defensive choices on the right side of our field, so we also have to look at that and see what went wrong there. We have to make the necessary adjustments and bounce back and come again.”