Digicel Premier League defending champions, Harbour View, came from behind to overturn Westmoreland’s Reno 2-1 at Frome yesterday in a tough encounter which could have gone either way.
Harbour View leapfrogged Reno to 13 points and sixth, while Reno slipped to seventh as they remained on 11.
Reno displayed the better quality football for most of the first half and duly took the lead in the 32nd minute when Christopher Harris, who had come on for Fabian Blake, who suffered a cramp, scored the opening goal. He had been on the field less than a minute when he scored.
Goalkeeping blunders
This goal brought the fight out of the east Kingston team, and their resilience paid off through a goalkeeping blunder. Marcelino Blackburn cracked a shot to goal and it was poorly handled by Dennis Taylor, who allowed the ball to slip from his grasp into the goal.
Taylor blundered a second time and Harbour View capitalised to scored a second goal, which won the game 2-1. The goal came in the 46th. Harbour View attacked from the kick-off and earned a foul. Jermaine Hue made good the resulting free kick, which deflected off a defender in the wall and, again, poor handling on the part of Taylor in the Reno goal sent the Kingstonians celebrating.
Red cards
Both Omar Johnson of Reno and Kemeel Wolfe of Harbour View picked up red cards in the 86th minute, missing out on eight minutes of action in a game which had four minutes added due to a heated confrontation between the two.
Picking up four points from three straight home games is not exactly what the technical director for Reno, Wendell Downswell, wanted, but he is optimistic that their next match, away against Sporting Central, will be a different ball game.
Donovan Hayles blamed their poor first-half performance to motor-vehicle problems. “We had some vehicle problems coming here, so we were late in arriving. The players changed in the bus in order to take the field on time and not lose the points, so I must congratulate the players for doing so well, even though we did not have enough time to prepare for the game.”
Neither of the teams complained about the conditions, even though there was non-stop rain at Frome throughout the entire game.