Jermaine Lannaman, Gleaner Writer

Preliminary round standouts Wolmer's Boys and Kingston College (KC) will make their debut in the second round of the ISSA/Pepsi/Digicel urban area Manning Cup schoolboy football competition, when they go up against Norman Manley High and Bridgeport High, respectively, at the Constant Spring Complex today.

In what could be two enterprising encounters, Wolmer's, who were narrowly edged out of group honours in the preliminary round by Jamaica College (JC), will seek to shrug of their tag of underachievers over the past five seasons, when they go up against a sturdy Norman Manley team.

Face-off

Meanwhile KC, who topped their preliminary round group, but lost miserably to JC in the Walker Cup quarter-finals, will face-off against Bridgeport, who have made it to the final four of the competition for the past three seasons.

In the first encounter Wolmer's, given their line-up of current and former national youth representatives that includes defenders Ashani Fairlough, Akeem Brown, Peter Beckford and striker Christopher Waugh, who is the competition's joint second leading goalscorer with 15 goals, will start slight favourites against Norman Manley, who without long-serving coach, Alrick Clarke (now in charge of Calabar), have surprised many in reaching this far in the competition.

Good nick

"The team is in good nick and I expect them to go out there and give a good account of themselves," said Wolmer's coach, Michael Francis, who will be watching the game from the stands after being handed a one-match suspension for refusing to allow his team to continue their team's final group game against JC, which ended in chaos after several crowd invasions.

"They have worked well leading up to tomorrow's (today's) game and it is just for them to continue the good work," he added.

In the second match-up, KC, who began the season as a favourite given the fact they had a very young team which made it to the semi-finals last year, will have to dig deep to outperform Bridgeport, who having surrendered preliminary round group honours to rivals Eltham, are hurting.

The second round consists of three groups of four teams each. Group I includes the four teams that will be in action today,

Group Two is made up of Calabar, Excelsior, Tivoli and St Andrew Technical High School (STATHS), while champions JC, Eltham, Waterford and St George's College are down to contest Group Three.

In tomorrow's matches, Tivoli, who finished second to Norman Manley in the preliminaries, will go up against Walker Cup finalists Calabar at 1 p.m., while STATHS, who finished second to KC, will play Excelsior, the other Walker Cup finalist.

The top team in each group, along with the best second-place team, will advance to the semi-finals.

All matches in the second round will be played at Constant Spring at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., respectively.