By PAUL-ANDRE WALKER, Staff ReporterTIVOLI GARDENS TASTED Wray and Nephew National Premier League glory for the third time in their illustrious history, when they beat Harbour View 5-3 on aggregate last night at the National Stadium.
Harbour View managed to eke out a 2-1 victory last night despite only having nine men on the field when they did it, but, with the first leg of the tie ending 4-1 in favour of the 'Tangerine Brigade' that victory was bittersweet to say the least.
Empty-handed
Time and time again Harbour View have made it to the big show and gone home empty-handed and it seems as if their under-21s had also caught 'title shyness'.
Leading Portmore United 2-1 from the first-leg, the 'young Stars of the East' gave up two goals to ensure that their club would go home without a trophy.
Portmore United drew level in the 86th minute through a Bryan Bayliss strike. Bayliss' goal sent the game into overtime and the blue and yellows saw their hopes dashed in the 97th minute when Carlington Smith fired a low hard shot that had national under-20 Harbour View custodian, Ryan Thompson, unsighted until the last minute.
Harbour View's big boys had a more difficult task on their hands, having to stare down the barrel of a three-goal deficit. They couldn't have asked for a better start with Luton Shelton capping off a fine solo effort in the 10th minute to give them hope of Premiership glory.
Thanks once again to weak goalkeeping, Harbour View saw their hopes dashed when a Fabian Davis free kick was handled poorly by Leeroy Gray, returning Tivoli's three-goal margin in the 23rd minute of play.
Things went downhill after that, with Harbour View being reduced to 10 men nine minutes later when Christopher Harvey had the red card thrust in his face by the referee out of Guatemala, Carlos Batres Gonzales. With Harbour View down to 10 men, their attacking thrust was curtailed and Tivoli's Steve Green was doing a marvelous job of breaking down the Harbour View attacks from his central midfield position.
After the half-time break things would only got worse, with Harbour View going down to nine men.
Jermaine Hue, Harbour View's key man in midfield, was ejected for violent conduct as he tried to free himself from the grasp of Tivoli's Denroy Gordon.
A third red card was issued in the 62nd minute when Tivoli's Roland Dean was ejected for a late two-footed challenge. Those ejections, while having an impact on the quality of play, didn't stop Harbour View from fighting to the end and even while being a man down they managed to get a late winner from the boot of Craig Stewart in the 91st minute.
Proud coach
Harbour View coach Donovan Hayles was proud of his team's performance and thought they showed Jamaica they could compete with the Tivoli team.
"We came here and showed that we have the class to win the game. We showed that we were going to make a match of it and you saw that from the word go, life wasn't easy for Tivoli and even at the end, it still wasn't easy for them," he said.
Manager of the Tivoli team, Bryan Rose, didn't think it was as difficult for his team as Hayles would make it seem.
"The team promised 'Admiral' that once they got here they would win it for him and that they did," he said. "When Harbour View went one goal up we didn't panic, we just decided that we would go out and score a goal as well," he said.
