{"id":533,"date":"2017-08-09T20:42:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-09T20:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/westernmirror.com\/?p=533"},"modified":"2017-08-09T20:42:00","modified_gmt":"2017-08-09T20:42:00","slug":"finally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/?p=533","title":{"rendered":"FINALLY!!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Noelita Lawrence – Staff Reporter<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After more than a decade toiling, perseverers Challengers finally got their hand on the Western Masters League trophy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Challengers, perennial semi-finalists, etched their names on the winners\u2019 list with a come-from-behind 3-1 thrashing of first-time finalists Faithful Masters in the championship game of the Keith\/Michael Thorpe League played at Jarrett Park on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Jerry Foster, Omar Clarke and Philmore Thompson were the scorers for the newly installed champions, while an own-goal was the contributor for the Faithful team.<\/p>\n

After a brisk start to the finale, Faithful found the early advantage somewhat against the run of play when an own-goal was turned in on 11 minutes to send the unfancied Faithful ahead.<\/p>\n

However, after falling behind, Challengers upped the tempo and swarmed their opponent\u2019s goal mercilessly, looking for the equalizer.<\/p>\n

They had a few near brushes before finally leveling the scores through a well-worked build-up.<\/p>\n

From a three-man play down the flank, Foster got on the end of a weighted cross deep inside the six-yard box to powerfully head home unchallenged between three defenders.<\/p>\n

The goal pushed Faithful on the retreat as they only just managed to keep the scores level at 1-1 heading into the halftime break.<\/p>\n

Challengers took the lead 10 minutes into the second half when former Seba United player Clarke, got on the end of an exquisite 35-yard pass and with his opponents caught ball-watching, he slammed home on the run from an acute angle.<\/p>\n

Nine minutes later, Challenger all but wrapped up the game as a contest when a defensive error saw the Faithful captain, Timothy Graham, robbed of the ball after a deep back pass.<\/p>\n

The ball was then tapped into the back of the net, sealing the win for the Challengers team to their delight.<\/p>\n

SECTIONAL AWARDS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the fleet-footed striker Omar Clarke of the champions won the Golden Boot award for his eleven goals (11), while the Most Valuable Player award went to Michael Thompson.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s competition, which saw the absence for former many-times winners Hanover Masters, First Choice and Jamaica Brazil, saw a total of 12 teams participating before Cambridge Masters was kicked out.<\/p>\n

Brian Miller, organizer of the event, said, \u201cThis year\u2019s competition was a good one. We\u00a0 had\u00a0 our challenges at times, but in the end it was OK.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Noelita Lawrence – Staff Reporter   After more than a decade toiling, perseverers Challengers finally got their hand on the Western Masters League trophy. Challengers, perennial semi-finalists, etched their names on the winners\u2019 list with a come-from-behind 3-1 thrashing of first-time finalists Faithful Masters in the championship game of the Keith\/Michael Thorpe League played at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[86,30],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-masters-league","tag-western-jamaica"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":534,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions\/534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}