Dandy Town: ‘We can stop Cougars’

Only one team can stop Devonshire Cougars holding all four major domestic football trophies on Monday — and Dandy Town are in no mood to roll over.

The two teams will lock horns to contest the Dudley Eve Trophy — the first piece of silverware of the season — at the National Sports Centre, kick-off 2:30pm.

Cougars won the triple crown last season — league, FA Cup and Friendship Trophy — and the Dudley Eve is the only gap in an otherwise packed trophy cabinet.

For Dandy Town, currently top of the Digicel Premier Division, they are waiting on fitness verdicts on Jahquille Stowe, who required stitches after a clash with team-mate Rico Trott in their match against Wolves.

Hornets skipper Brandon Minors, converted to a centre-half this season, said: “It would be a great honour [to win the Trophy] in my first year as captain.

“We’ve been preparing really hard and showing a lot of teamwork. The team has good cohesion  that’s working well for us and giving us a lot of success.

“So we look forward to Monday and look forward to the challenge.

“We’ll continue to work until  that day and after — and it will be a good game.”

Town coach Jomar Wilkinson says stopping Cougars getting their hands on a fourth trophy is not the main motivation for his team.

He said: “I think we are the two elite teams on the island. Every  time we meet it’s a challenge.

“If we can be successful it will give us a lot of confidence going forward as far as what we are asking of them in training.

“I have a lot of belief in Dandy Town. Last year we took a journey, a negative journey, but a positive one in the end because we learnt a lot of valuable lessons in the end and I feel this team has matured and shown a lot character. We want to impose our game on them. We train our team hard to play a high pressing game with high tempo and Cougars will expect that.

“With Dennis Brown as their coach you can expect them to be defensively very organized.

“They have a lot of offensive talent as well. It’s going to be a tough test for us but I feel our players are up for it. 

“Goals win games but defence wins you championships so with our offensive talent we should pose them a lot of problems.”