By Paul A Reid, Staff ReporterWESTERN BUREAU:
RIVOLI TOOK a one-goal lead over a youthful Reno team in their first leg JNBS Federation Cup Knockout third round game played at the Frome Sports Club yesterday.
Gregg Taylor in the 63rd and Ricardo 'Ambrose' Knight in the 80th led the St Catherine team to a 2-1 win going into Wednesday's return leg game at Prison Oval.
In a twist of scheduling, the teams will meet three times in a row as they will also meet next Sunday, again at Frome in a Wray and Nephew National Premier League (NPL) third round game.
Adrian Robinson, the second of the two reserves on the Reno bench, had levelled the scores for Reno with a well- taken goal, powered home from well outside the area in the 69th minute.
Reno were forced to field a young team as they were not able to register their senior players who were out of the team at the time the club sent in the names to the organisers.
Rivoli were also without a number of their senior players including regular captain Patrick Beech, national left back Garfield Reid, midfielder Mobi Oparaku and striker Gregory Tape, formerly of Reno.
SENT OFF FOR FIGHTING
Both teams were forced to play with 10 men for about 60 minutes after Collin Brown of Reno and Derrick Planter were sent off for fighting around the 30 minutes mark. Planter went to clear a ball out of his area but kicked it straight into Brown's face. The Reno player retaliated by striking Planter who lashed back at him and both were ordered off.
Rivoli's coach, Bradley Stewart, said: "I am happy with the result but not necessarily with how we played. The conditions, the wind, hardness of the surface meant we could not flow as easily as we wanted to but we understand as there is a drought on and we can put up with that."
He added: "I thought it was a competitive game and we had some early chances which we did not put away, but we had some players there who were not regular starters. We have a responsibility to expose them at this level and they have a yardstick to measure up to and that helps us to make sure they perform at acceptable levels."
He said he would make some changes for Wednesday's game"
"One or two players will have to come back for the next game as we need to get them ready for the Premier League and now that we are in the lead we want to make sure we take care of the second game. But we face Reno again on Sunday so mentally you have to keep your players focused as you are playing the same team three times in a row and you need to rotate your squad."
