Adrian Frater, News Editor

Western Bureau:

In a game of two contrasting halves, defending champions Portmore United FC and Montego Bay United FC (MBUFC) did their respective causes no good when they battled to a 1-1 draw in Sunday night's Red Stripe Premier League fixture at the Montego Bay Sports Complex in St James.

Portmore United, arguably the only team with a realistic chance of catching runaway leaders Harbour View FC, now on 58 points, remain second in the 12-team competition with the one point they secured, which lifted them to 47 points.

MBUFC played a dismal first half and at times appeared all set to surrender the game to their slick-moving opponents. However, they kept their top-six place with the one point they secured which took them to 40 points.

taking the lead

Portmore, who played a dominant first half but was less potent in the second, took the lead courtesy of an early first-half strike by Suela McCalla, who capitalised on poor goalkeeping by the MBUFC custodian to give his team a 1-0 lead. However, MBUFC's skipper Fabian McCarthy gave his team a share of the points with a brilliant free kick minutes into the second half.

"It was a tough game in parts, but I still think we should have won because we got the better chances," said Portmore United's coach André Waugh. "A draw on the road is usually not a bad result, but we really wanted more from this game."

For MBUFC, which started the round quite shaky and are somewhat struggling to regain the excellent form they were showing towards the end of last year, were also quite disappointed with the result.

"Portmore had us under a lot of pressure in the first half, but except for the goal they scored, we were able to hold our own," said Dr Dean Weatherley, coach of MBUFC. "We played a very good second half, and had we taken our chances, we would have won the game."