St. Ann’s Rangers head coach Dean Pacheco’s dream of handing the club’s owners Richard Fakoory and Richard Piper their first title at the Pro League level disintegrated last Friday in the semi-final round of the Lucozade Sport Goal Shield at the Mannie Ramjohn Stadium.
After holding Defence Force to a goalless first half, Rangers conceded four times and scored just once, exiting the tournament 1-4 on the heels of a surprising 1-0 win over former winners and current Digicel Pro League Champions W Connection in the quarter-final round on Friday 13 April at the same venue.
Double goalscorer Richard Roy first fired the soldiers ahead in the 57th minute before Cameron Roget leveled the scores 1-1. However Rangers went on to concede in the 64th(Josimar Belgrave), 81st(Jerwyn Balthazar) and 84th(Roy) minutes.
“We played to plan in the first half and got some chances which we didn’t convert,” said an unhappy Pacheco.
“And in the second half we lost concentration and didn’t keep to plan. Some of our players started to play their own game and not to the plan of the team. We even had some goalkeeping blunders. Basically we lost focus and discipline.”
However Pacheco who fielded goalkeeper Shane Mattis, Akil Clarke with the armband, Kareem Moses, Alonso King, Hector Sam, Elijah Belgrave, Devon Modeste, Mikhail Awai, Theon James, Cameron Roget, Nicholas Valentine and substitutes Jemel Berot and Kerron Alexander said he wasn’t totally disappointed.
He added, “After the game the messages coming back from other coaches and people who witnessed the match applauded how we played in the first half. So if we had stuck to the plan in the second half the result could have gone our way. But we had a lot of young guys in our team so I’m not totally disappointed that we lost.”