WESTERN BUREAU:
DEAN WEATHERLY finally nabbed the elusive Olivier Shield title after he guided Pepsi/Sports Plus daCosta Cup champions Cornwall College to a record 7-0 return leg win over Manning Cup winners Bridge-port High at Harbour View's Compound Field last Thursday.
Cornwall's win was the largest margin in the 92-year history of the competition. Clarendon College's 6-0 win over Calabar in the 1977 return leg in Kingston was the previous highest margin.
The win avenged a 3-2 first leg loss for the Montego Bay team at Jarrett Park, the previous Saturday and gave Cornwall their second triple championship season.
Cornwall completed a successful season, winning the daCosta and Ben Francis KO and the Olivier Shield, symbol of all-island schoolboy football supremacy and in the process denying Bridgeport the triple. Bridgeport had won the Manning and Walker Cup titles.
Cornwall last won the triple in 1983 under another former Cornwall College player, Steve 'Sta B' Bucknor and had just failed to take the quadruple when they lost the Nutrament Shield to St George's College at Jarrett Park. The now defunct Nutrament Shield was competed for between the winners of the rural area Ben Francis KO and the Walker Cup KO winners.
Weatherly said after the game that he felt "relieved" as he had achieved the goals he had set for himself and the team at the start of the season.
The former Cornwall and Munro player had twice lost the Olivier Shield, beaten in his first attempt by Charlie Smith in 1995 and lost to Norman Manley last season.
The Olivier Shield was the fifth title Weatherly was winning in the last two season after copping the rural area double last season and his ninth in the nine years he had been at Cornwall.
A change in formation by Weatherly for the return leg reaped rich rewards as Orlando Coleman who was brought in for midfielder Ryan Clarke, scored twice in the first half as Cornwall raced to a 4-0 lead.
Captain Garrick Gordon also had two goals in the first half as he finished with 15 goals, just short of the 18 he had scored last season.
Goals from Rohan Bernard, Kirkland Smith and Dane Richards in the second half completed the rout.
