Cavalier seek triple in ‘Trilogy’

KINGSTON:

As they step out to play their role in the Jamaica Premier League finals ‘Trilogy’ against Mount Pleasant, Cavalier will be seeking their own triple, of sorts, in winning a third title in five seasons.

The Corporate Area-based club won the title in 2020-21 and last season, when they gained unprecedented success in also advancing to the quarter-finals of the Concacaf Champions Cup. The memories of that progression, which featured big-time football against Inter Miami FC in a packed house at the National Stadium, are fresh in the minds of players who have been fashioned into the Cavalier way, owing to a carefully executed plan.

Go with youth, the next generation of players. That was the simple, yet effective recalibration that has served in transforming the club’s playing style and culture, to now yield a place in their fourth JPL final in the past five seasons.

“We have seen the successes of having that youthful exuberance within the club. When you can have a successful team, winning two Premier League titles in the last four years, and three consecutive Premier League finals ... I think we have been blessed with this philosophy because not only does it allow us to perform on the field, but it allows us to operate within our means in terms of our budget. Older players may come with different habits and demands,” shared Ryan Foster, the club’s chairman.

Much of Cavalier’s recent focus has been placed on recruiting players from the Manning and daCosta Cup schoolboy football competitions and the team’s average age is 20.7, the lowest for any football club in the Caribbean.

However, most of the players in the senior team joined the club at a much younger age and developed through its feeder system, which has been dominant in winning a number of age group competitions.

“Mr Speid (Rudolph) and his technical team, David Laylor, Everdean Scarlett, Omar Stanley, Colin Wilson, Jeffrey Henry, and what we would have been able to do is to look at the grassroots, and our grassroots is not far from those players that would be used within the Premier League,” Foster shared.

“We have a very strong recruitment process, led by Paul Maxwell, in terms of the type of players who we use,” he added.

The growth, the club chairman explained, is not only through the leagues into the Premier League, but onward to regional and wider competitions that provide experience, exposure and earning opportunities for the players and club by way of loans and transfers.

“It imperative to live within our means and ensure that we are at that professional and performing level so that we can be within the Caribbean Cup space, we can be within the Concacaf Champions League,” Foster said. “That we have seen, has allowed us now to be a brand, a brand not only within the Caribbean but a brand that would have been able to pull out over 30,000 people at the National Stadium when Inter Miami played Cavalier on March 13.”

From last season to this one, several top players who developed through the Cavalier youth system have been transferred including Kyle Ming and Gadail Irving, the respective captain and vice-captain, and striker Shaneil Thomas. And two years prior other main players in strikers Ronaldo Webster and Colin Anderson, who would have been the JPL’s leading goalscorer then, also departed.

“It speaks to our academy, it speaks to our philosophy of transitioning the younger talent within this space. It also speaks to our philosophy of living within our means, not operating the club outside of the financial resources that we have,” Foster explained.

“I think for the ‘Trilogy’, which is what many people are calling it now because it’s three straight finals now that Mount Pleasant will be playing against Cavalier, I think our young players will do their best and Mr Speid, if I know my technical director, would already have worked out how we can win this game come Friday,” Foster said. “Our players are hyped for the game, our players are not intimidated. They’ve been in this space before.”