Audley Boyd, Assistant Sport Editor
THE LAST time they met it was a cracker.
However, defending champions Portmore United and the team they denied a third consecutive crown, Arnett Gardens, are not playing like they did in last season's Wray & Nephew National Premier League final.
They are hoping their first match since then will inspire play of a similar calibre in today's late game, set to kick-off at 5:00 p.m. at Tony Spaulding Sports Complex.
Waterhouse, the second-placed team on 15 points, are playing at the level those two were at when they met in the last championship game. Their home crowd is full of expectations for a home clash against Constant Spring at 3:30 p.m. at Drewsland.
One other game will kick-off at the same time in the Corporate Area, Tivoli will be looking to put it on newcomers Star Cosmos who are languishing at the bottom, while Rivoli are set for a tough 3:30 battle at Prison Oval against Trelawny's Village United, a semi-finalist last season.
In eight rounds of Wray and Nephew National Premier League matches since the new season, Arnett Gardens personnel and performance is a mere shadow of the team Portmore United beat 3-2 in sudden death to lift the national title.
This has contributed to four losses, two victories and as many draws which put them fourth from bottom on eight points.
By contrast, Portmore United are third on 13 points with three wins and only one loss.
Despite the difference, Portmore's coach, Lenworth Hyde, believes the match will be difficult.
"I don't care who is playing for Arnett they're coming to play hard. They're going to be motivated to play us also seeing that we went to the final last season," Hyde said.
Hyde was quick to add though: "We don't look at what's going on with them. We have to look at our team and I love what my team is doing, but we're just not scoring."
Chief man in their scoring department is Roen Nelson, whose record 30th goal decided the title game 3-2 in sudden death last season, while Andrew Morrison, Winston Griffiths, captain Kevin Deerr, Anthony Modeste and Damian Williams are other good scoring candidates for the Portmore team.
They have played so far with most members of last season's championship unit and are rounding into form now as, according to Hyde, the new players are more in synch with their style.
"We're getting it together now," he said. "The new players are just beginning to understand the system. I'm a bit confident in my team and hope to get a good result come Sunday."
In the meantime, Arnett, beaten in their past two games, hope to translate the bitterness of those failures as well as the loss in last season's final into a badly needed victory.
"This is a game that the team is looking forward to. Despite us losing our last two games the team is looking very good," Arnett's coach, Jerome Waite, said of his under-achieving team.
"I believe now is the best time for the team to rise to the occasion not only to get another win under our belt but this is the team which beat us in the final last year so I know that this game will be another end to end action," Waite said.
Arnett's team in most matches so far has lacked main offensive players Walter Boyd, Kevin Wilson, Everton Bunsie, Cornel Chin-Sue and Denton Shedden and it reflected in their failure to score as well as more pressure on the defence which has conceded 13 goals already.
Waite promised changes though, but did not name names.
"We've a couple players who did not play in our past two games and we're looking forward to having our strongest team at this time," he stated.
The only change Waterhouse want now is more points.
"We dropped two points in our last game," a rather pessimistic Harold Thomas, their coach, sounded off in relation to their 1-1 midweek at Portmore.
He added: "They lost to the newcomers which would both give us good reason to play and get full points."
Constant Spring's loss came at the hands of newcomers Invaders, who had only four points from drawn games before then.
Even though they are experiencing contrasting form at this time, Thomas refused to write off his opponents, saying: "We don't look on the fact that they lost. My position is on any given day you can lose to any team in this league. It's how you play on the day."
POWER FROM WITHIN
Instead, he is counting on the power from within that is driving his team at this moment.
"All in all the fighting spirit in constantly there and if we can get some energy we can look forward to a very good result," Thomas said.
There may yet be one other factor, Constant Spring's new coach, Geoffrey Maxwell.
"It can work both ways. It depends on the maturity of the players. I think the players are very mature and even though it might be a factor it will play very little impact on the game itself," explained Thomas.
For the man who fashioned Waterhouse's counter-attacking style which made them champions of the Premier League in 1998 and many other major titles around that time, it could be different.
"I've a good track record against Waterhouse," Maxwell said of results gained at the Drewsland team with other clubs. "I've defeated them with Village and Tivoli and drew recently with Reno."
He left Reno last week and has only had two sessions with Constant Spring.
"Having started to work with Constant Spring on Friday evening and Saturday morning it gives me little time in which to possibly rearrange Spring's method and approach to an away game as I would like to. But I know the Waterhouse players very well and I know what it takes to play against them because the method hasn't changed."
Though he said that, Maxwell pointed to a danger.
"They're a very competent team, they have players who can damage you during the course of a game," he said, adding: "I look forward to going down there to meet some old friends and get a look at the mini stadium which has always been a dream of mine."
