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KC take aim at Campion - Defending champions plotting path to Manning Cup quarters
October 31, 2025
Head coach of defending Manning Cup champions Kingston College (KC), Vassell Reynolds, remains confident that his team will bounce back from their recent defeat and secure qualification to the quarter-finals of this year's competition.
KC suffered their first loss of the season last week when they were edged 1-0 by Hydel High in their Group Two encounter at Stadium East playing field.
Calabar High, who defeated Campion College 4-1 in the other group match, currently lead the standings on goal difference ahead of Hydel, with only the top two teams set to advance to the quarter-final stage.
Reynolds acknowledged that his team is in a challenging position, but expressed optimism about their chances going forward.
"We are aware of the predicament that we are in. But we didn't get a chance to discuss as a team, separately from the coaching staff, who would have had some discussions and have been making plans throughout the storm to see how we would approach it as soon as competition resumes," he said.
"It is about the awareness of the situation, and we are making plans for that second game if and when the competition begins."
Despite the setback, Reynolds noted his team has the quality and resilience needed to recover.
"We are very confident that we have what it takes to get all three points from that game against Campion College," Reynolds said.
"This is not a situation that is new because we are accustomed to this sort of challenge, and so we just have to face it head on. We had a long meeting after the game against Hydel because we had assumed that would have been the last game before the storm would have passed and recognised where we would have fallen short," he said.
Reflecting on the loss, Reynolds said KC's main issue was poor finishing.
"The issue in that game is that we would have failed to execute in front of goal," he admitted. "I think that was nearly a double-digit amount of chances that we would have failed to capitalise on, and we really should have converted some of them, and therefore we wouldn't be in this situation."
Meanwhile ISSA has yet to announce the restart date of the schoolboy football competitions, following the passage of Category Five Hurricane Melissa on Tuesday.
