Molynes won’t melt down after first loss, says president Cruickshank

Molynes United president, Herman Cruickshank, said the absence of coach Lijyasu Simms from their Red Stripe Premier League (RSPL) game on Sunday played a part in their side suffering their first defeat of the season.

The newly promoted team went down 3-1 to Cavalier FC after avoiding a loss in the first seven games in top-flight football.

Cruikshank said that Simms was away from the team as he mourns the death of his brother and he believes the players not only missed their coach on the day, they were mourning with him as well.

But the Molynes’ boss says that those who are expecting this defeat to lead to a meltdown from his team should think again, as this was just a bad game. He expects that when Simms returns to the sidelines against Humble Lion on Sunday, things will return to normal for them.

Serious bond

“The coach has established a serious bond with the team and we showed him a lot of love and respect for the past few days because of what has gone on with him. I won’t totally blame it on that fact but I think the team missed the coach and was still mourning. It’s not a case of Cavalier outplaying us but you didn’t get the wow factor from us in this game. They (players) were just going through the motions. So this is one of our bad games but we caught our bad game early and the good thing about it is nobody has passed us, we are still up there,” he said.

However, he does not expect this defeat to lead to a downward spiral. “We are going back on track, we want to run some winning incentives for what they have done so far and get them back up, because you know money always motivates. But I don’t see us losing three straight, we are just going to come back up,” he said.

He continued: “The main reason we are doing well (in Premier League) is because we maintain 80 per cent of the team that won the Super League with us. Most of these players are basically new to the Premier League, so when you find most of the other teams were busy gelling, we had already gelled coming into the league. We didn’t follow the mistakes that most people make when they reach the Premier League and go around and pick a lot more players.

“So we started to gel early and we picked up the points early. We expected the momentum to slow down when the other teams start to gel, so what we are doing now is preparing the other people (registered this year) to come into the team.”

Molynes currently share the lead atop the table with Waterhouse on 19 points, but Waterhouse hold a better goal difference. Both teams are on seven points clear of nearest challenger Harbour View in the standings.

“Eleven more points can keep us in the league. When you are a new team and you go to the bottom of the table everybody take set on you. If we have 30 points before the second round ends, all we are going to do is play for placement, so we can take more chances and push forward and do what we have to do. But is going to be rough with Humble Lion on Sunday but we are going confident,” he said.