Nigel Si­mon

Michael Mc­Comie, coach of Ma Pau, is pleased with his club's per­for­mance in the first round of the Dig­i­cel T&T Pro­fes­sion­al Foot­ball League. "The first round from Ma Pau's stand point was im­pres­sive com­pared to the two pre­vi­ous years when tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion we fin­ished lev­el on points with pow­er-house W Con­nec­tion and on­ly two points away from the cur­rent league cham­pi­on Joe Pub­lic," said Mc­Comie yes­ter­day, two days af­ter be­ing held to a goal­less draw by Di­recTV North East. "It is ba­si­cal­ly un­fa­mil­iar ter­ri­to­ry for Ma Pau. It shows the growth of the club from 2007 where we were bot­tom of the ta­ble and now be­ing a con­tender for one of the Con­ca­caf spots.

"From our per­spec­tive, we thought we could have fin­ished with more points but we see it as a learn­ing curve, see­ing that the ma­jor­i­ty of our play­ers are young. "We will be try­ing to cor­rect some of our de­fi­cien­cies in time for the sec­ond round. All in all, the league in it­self, in my opin­ion, is the most com­pet­i­tive it has been since the in­cep­tion." Mc­Comie said that in the sec­ond to last match against strug­gling Po­lice his team did well to come from a goal down and was lead­ing 2�1 in the 89th minute. "It was a bit of bril­liance from Po­lice to equalise in in­jury time so cred­it must be giv­en to the po­lice­men," he point­ed out.

In the last game against North East Stars on Sat­ur­day, Mc­Comie felt that Ma Pau did not cap­i­talise on the op­por­tu­ni­ties cre­at­ed and that North East Stars played a very com­pet­i­tive game. "I be­lieve the Ma Pau play­ers were a bit fit­ter, faster and we moved the ball around the park with a lot more ur­gency than they did. "Gen­er­al­ly, I think our team played well and the young play­ers are start­ing to show more ma­tu­ri­ty, lin­ing up against play­ers like Arnold Dwari­ka, Gary Glas­gow, Leslie Fitz­patrick, Charles Pol­lard and Er­rol Mc Far­lane–all ex­pe­ri­enced ex-na­tion­al play­ers. Our 19 and 20-year-old play­ers did a fan­tas­tic job against the ex­pe­ri­enced op­po­si­tion." Aquil Sel­by (19), Coneal Thomas (21), Trevin Cae­sar (20) and Shane Cal­dreron (23) were sin­gled out by coach Mc­Comie for con­sis­tent per­for­mances.

Com­ment­ing on the switch of his team's match from Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um to the as­tro turf at Mar­vin Lee Sta­di­um, Mc­Comie said, "See­ing that the ma­jor­i­ty of games in the up­com­ing knock­out com­pe­ti­tion will be played at the Mar­vin Lee Sta­di­um, we at Ma Pau wel­comes the change of venue–the as­tro turf as against the grass at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um–be­cause the play­ers at Ma Pau find it eas­i­er to play on the Cas­tro. "Our short-pass­ing game and al­so the size of the field is con­ducive to our speedy wingers and cre­ative strik­ers. "Word around is that a num­ber of the oth­er teams don't like to play on the turf at the Mar­vin Lee Sta­di­um, but as I said we wel­come the turf be­cause we can im­pose our­selves on op­pos­ing teams be­cause of our style of play and the favourable di­men­sions of the field. "My play­ers have com­mit­ted them­selves to im­prov­ing their game and con­tin­ue to en­ter­tain our faith­ful sup­port­ers and the sup­port­ers of the Pro League."