On Tuesday, Arnett Gardens FC and Vere United FC registered their first wins of the 2022 Jamaica Premier League (JPL) following second-round action at the UWI-JFF Captain Horace Burrell Centre of Excellence.
In the first game of a doubleheader, Arnett Gardens came from behind to edge Portmore United 2-1, while Vere United scored 1-0 over Molynes United in the second game.
Renaldo Cephas pulled Arnett Gardens level at 1-1 in the 14th minute, after which Kimani Arbouine grabbed the winner a minute from the half-time interval.
With his second goal of the season, Shai Smith had given Portmore United a seventh-minute lead in the contest.
Arnett Gardens thus moved to three points after losing their first match 2-1 to defending champions Cavalier in week one.
Portmore remains on one point following their 1-1 draw with Tivoli Gardens in the first week.
Vere’s first win
In the second game, Javier Brown hit a first-half penalty, which proved decisive in Vere United’s win.
The 29th-minute goal resulted in Vere United registering their first points this season, having lost 2-1 to Dunbeholden last week.
Molynes United remains on one point after their 2-2 result with Harbour View in the first week.
Vere United’s assistant coach Rudolph Stennett was happy with the result but insisted there was more work to be done for the team to improve.
“I want to say congrats to the team. I think they fought hard this game as opposed to the first game. In the first game, we were flat-footed, but we learned from that.
“We had some opportunities to score, but we were rushing a little bit, and so we are going to have to work on that, and then we will find the goals,” Stennett told the media.
For Molynes United’s head coach Garnett Lawrence, the work continues.
“We took too long to believe; the first half was very dismal, and we improved a little in the second half, but we need to believe a little bit more. I also think we need to possess the ball a little bit better because we had some possession, but we didn’t do much with it in the final third, and so we are going to have to continue working on that.”
