Sport

Ryon Jones, Gleaner Writer

After his Waterhouse team completed its sixth consecutive match without a win, coach Geoffrey Maxwell was very annoyed following a 1-1 tie with Arnett Gardens at Waterhouse Mini Stadium on Sunday.

His team had earned a 53rd minute lead after a goal by Kemar Thomas.

However, they surrendered that advantage to Arnett Gardens courtesy of an 84th minute strike from Newton Sterling.

"I am very annoyed with a lot of individual players out there who should really be the ones who are guiding the junior players," said Maxwell. "You have to have forwards who have killer instinct and unfortunately we don't possess those types of forwards."

Continuing, he said: "I think our midfield is one of our major areas that is giving me concern for the last four months. We play well when we have the ball but when we don't have the ball we don't press, we don't track, we don't close down people and this has cost us a lot of games," he pointed out.

Two glorious opportunities

Waterhouse missed two glorious opportunities to take the lead in the second half, as Jonathan Williams failed to convert a header from near six yards and then Kevin Lamey uncharacteristically kicked high from near the edge of the area with only the keeper to beat.

The deadlock was finally broken in the 53rd minute when Lamey's 25-yard free kick was parried by Arnett Gardens' custodian, Julian McLeish, but Waterhouse's under-21 player, Thomas, was the first to react, hammering the ball into the roof of the net.

Arnett Gardens grabbed a share of the points in the 84th minute, thanks to Sterling's third goal in as many games. He collected a pass on the edge of the 18-yard box before shrugging off a defender and slamming a shot past the helpless Waterhouse keeper, Richard MaCallum.

No excuse

"I am disappointed because I thought we should have been at least two goals up at half-time," said Maxwell. "Johnny (Williams) got the simplest of goals that he should have put away, one yard in front of goal and you are going to miss, there is no excuse for that.

"Overall my disappointment again is the concentration level. We lost it in the last 10 minutes, a game I thought was sewn up and we seem to be just technically gifting our opponents with points."

With his team now 14 adrift of leaders Harbour View, Maxwell says the league winner is likely to come from one of those two teams.

"A draw today has not done us any good, with Harbour View and Tivoli winning it could basically turn out now to be a two-horse race. Fourteen points is a lot of points to catch up with so it might be a difficult road ahead. But I suppose we just have to continue plugging away," he conceded.

Arnett Gardens' coach, Wayne Fairclough, thought his team played well enough to win."I thought that we played good enough to win. We needed the win but we got a point. We need to really try and keep on winning in order for us to be a good distance away from the relegation zone, but I think today's draw is good enough for us."

The draw was not good enough, however, as Arnett slipped back into the relegation zone, where they are joined by Portmore United.