Fresh start in Manchester for Reynolds

Vassell Reynolds has made his name as one of the top coaches at the youth level in Jamaica, having guided Wolmer's Boys School to success in the ISSA Champions Cup and Walker Cup, before making the move to rural schoolboy football to guide Rusea's High School to daCosta Cup glory.

After his success in Lucea, Hanover, Reynolds had a stint at former Red Stripe Premier League champions Montego Bay United (MBU), but things did not go as planned there and he and the second city club parted ways months before their relegation this season. Now he finds himself in the cool hills of central Jamaica, at Manchester High School. He said this move offered him a chance at a fresh start, after what happened at MBU, and to reconnect with what is important to him - his family.

Discuss plans

"The MoBay exit took me by surprise, to be honest," Reynolds told STAR Sports. "After I would've discussed plans for the programme, having taken up a programme that I felt was going through transition, what I did was introduce some youngsters. I think for the first round of the Premier League, we would have played with an average age of 21. We didn't do all that well in the first round, but I thought based on the team that we had, we didn't do all that badly either. Just when I thought the youngsters were finding their footing, then came the whole situation of me and the club parting companies. I was a little surprised and I felt then that I needed to regroup. I would've gotten some offers at club level from Super and Major League teams, but I thought I wanted to take a little break to recuperate and re-energise, so here am I trying to find myself with a new programme.

"One of the first factors is location. This move from Rusea's to Manchester is a bit personal because I wanted to get close to my parents. My siblings are not in the country, so I have to be close to my (elderly) parents to do some monitoring and taking care of them. Maybe my going to Manchester, was long in coming. I would've been close to that school for many years now. Even for as long as before I went to Wolmer's, it was my desire and I hoped that maybe one day I would've gotten the chance to be part of the Manchester High School football programme."

Reynolds has strong ties to the Mandeville-based Los Perfectos FC, where he had stints as both a player, in the Premier League, and a coach in the Major League.

With the next schoolboy football season five months away, Reynolds says he is just taking things in stride with his new team and not yet setting objectives. However, he describes his task with Manchester High as a rebuilding process.

"Based on what I would have inherited, we have about 40 to 50 per cent of the players that we would have retained from last year's squad," he explained. "We'll be building around that experience with a number of youngsters coming in. With the quality, I am fairly satisfied that it's a group that I can work with."