It is not their ultimate goal, but the road to it goes through the title.

"The purpose and the aim is to go to the Premier League, so the desire is there to win it. If you don't win you don't go to the play-offs," Dennis told STAR Sports after his team solidified its position in the semi-finals with a 3-0 win over Mountain View yesterday through two goals from Fabian Nethersole and one by Phillip Riley.

Santos have taken on the Premier League journey before, at least on a couple of occasions in the past two seasons.

"We went to the play-offs two times in-a-row and we didn't make it. We hope we'll be third time lucky," Dennis adds.

In previous years, they have hurdled Boys' Town for the right to be the Corporate Area's lone representative in the national play-offs.

They followed that up in the islandwide deciders with a fast start and looked set to complete the trip last season, only to be overhauled by St. Mary team Star Cosmos, which recovered from a campaign launched in real turtle fashion - zero point after three games.

It was a hard way to learn one of life's basic lessons - the race is not for the swift. And in a way Santos have gone about its business at different paces so far this season.

Internal problems

In the early runnings, they went full blast to emerge Mid Season champions with a win over Maverley-Hughenden. By the time they arrived at Mountain View Oval for the rescheduled fixture yesterday, they had recovered to be joint third on points with Bull Bay.

This followed a series of losses which Dennis blamed on lack of training due to "internal problems" and injuries.

"We've a lot of injuries ... but we're hoping to get them back on track before the semis start."

Two weeks is a fair bit of time as they prepare for a likely match-up against Bull Bay, a team just as hungry for success having made the drop from the Premiership last season.

"It's a good draw," Dennis says of the east Kingston team against whom they won 2-1 and drew 2-2 in match-ups this season.

His reason for saying that might well lie within those results, but he didn't say it, choosing instead to say "... Bull Bay will play football and Santos enjoy playing football so it will be a nice game."

No wonder he never enjoyed yesterday's clash against Mountain View. It wasn't a nice game - not only because of play and challenges on the pitch, but talk traded between benches.

At the end of the day though, the biggest statements were made by the conversions from Nethersole and Riley and the way their shooting boots spoke have not only kept them on track, but in sight of their ultimate goal.