'Teacha' Hyde: I learnt from the best!

Clarendon College (CC) technical director Lenny 'Teacha' Hyde who captured the ISSA/FLOW Ben Francis Cup on Wednesday, expressed his relief at winning his first schoolboy football title as a coach and said that CC's 'possession and position' philosophy of play is a system that has been around from his days of playing football.

CC is playing, arguably, the most attractive football at the schoolboy level, possessing the ball and moving about on wide and free areas. Hyde said that this has been their philosophy dating back to 1977 when they won their first daCosta Cup title.

"I was coached by Winston Chung-Fah, and I've learned a lot from him because this is how we used to play. I've picked up a lot from coaches like Jackie Bell, Leighton Duncan, and Carl Brown. When you want to play good football, you have to know how to coach the system and what you want from your players. In training, we have games that we play showing how we want the ball to move around, and we practise drills to not give away the ball," said Hyde, who was a part of the winning 1977 CC team.

Hyde is one of the successful local coaches winning the National Premier League with Hazard (Portmore) United, Harbour View FC, and Tivoli Gardens FC. He is a multiple winner of the Jackie Bell Knockout Cup and also coached Harbour View to the Caribbean Cup title. However, Wednesday's win gave him his first schoolboy football title as a coach, which he believes now shows his ability to coach at all levels.

"Winning the Ben Francis Cup means a lot as it shows the versatility of dealing with both the senior and junior players," said Hyde, who is also the head coach of Red Stripe Premier League club Humble Lion.