Tough road ahead for Dunbeholden

With the Jamaica Premier League (JPL) scheduled to kick off in less than a month's time, the manager of Dunbeholden FC, Paul Christie, says the club is facing a race against time to ensure that players are fit and ready to begin the new season.

Christie told STAR Sports that because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of his players were not training as consistently as he would have liked, because they were not sure if the competition would go ahead this season due to the spike in local coronavirus cases late last year and early in 2021.

The club's training facility has been granted approval by the Government, and Christie says they will be intensifying preparations in the coming days ahead of the June 26 start.

"There are a lot of moving parts in terms of how we will try to get some games and how hard we will push. Still, we will not push too much to create unnecessary injuries. All of these dynamics will have to be taken into consideration as we move forward now," said Christie. The St Catherine-based club is scheduled to face Cavalier in their opening fixture of the competition.

He underscored that the club's coaching and management staff have been working assiduously in recent times to ensure that the team is as prepared as possible to participate in this season's competition.

"At this point, we just have to trust the coaching and technical staff to do the best they can and just live with the results," Christie said.

"However, I take comfort in the fact that what is happening to Dunbeholden is not happening to Dunbeholden alone because it is a national crisis, and so it would have affected all 12 teams in the competition," he said.

Dunbeholden were in sixth position in the league table with 43 points in the 2019-2020 season when the competition was declared null and void by the Jamaica Football Federation in May last year.