Mt Pleasant see light at the end of the tunnel

Finishing third in this season’s Jamaica Premier League (JPL) competition may not have been the outcome Mount Pleasant Academy envisioned at the start of the campaign, but Sporting Director Paul Christie says the club has still secured an important pathway toward defending its Caribbean Football Union (CFU) crown.

Mount Pleasant, who entered the season as favourites to lift the JPL title, secured third place on Sunday after edging rivals Montego Bay United 3-2 at the National Stadium. The victory earned the St Ann-based club a place in the CFU Shield, which serves as a route into the Caribbean Football Union Championships.

“This is not totally bad because we would have set two objectives at the start of the season, to be the Caribbean champions and to be the local champions, but we fell short at being the local champions,” said Christie. 

“But we get another chance to try and defend our Caribbean Championships and try to win the title of local champions next season.”

Despite the disappointment of not reaching the Jamaica Premier League final, Christie added that the club remains focused on continuing its growth and improvement heading into next season.

“It is a setback and so we have to go through the Shield qualifiers to get back into the Caribbean Cup, but these things happen and this is why we play the game,” he said.

“The beauty about football is that no one can sit and predict the thrills and spills of the game. So we continue to fight, we continue to improve, we continue to self-evaluate and we just move forward together as a group.”

Christie pointed out that the club has not yet completed its review of the campaign and therefore it would be premature to discuss possible changes within the squad or technical staff.

“The truth of the matter is that we have just completed the season and we have not sat and done our evaluation of the season as yet. So it is going to be premature to say if any changes will be made,” said Christie. 

“We can give a definitive answer in the next two or three weeks, but we always try to refresh our team and we will self-evaluate, have our discussions and move forward together.”

Mount Pleasant has invested heavily in its football programme in recent years and Christie shared that while the club remains ambitious, success still requires consistent execution on the field.

“We put in a lot of investment in the team but we still have to go out there and get the job done. So we still have a lot of work to do,” he said.