Jomar Wilkinson has been highly encouraged by his early tenure at the helm of Boulevard Blazers as he aims to re-establish the club in the top-flight.

Having left his role in charge of Somerset Trojans to take the reins of newly-promoted Boulevard in the summer, the signs on the field have already been promising from his side.

Competing in the newly formatted Dudley Eve Trophy, Boulevard settled for a share of the spoils in a 1-1 draw with Wilkinson’s previous employers in their group B opener before more than matching last season’s Premier Division title challengers PHC Zebras in a 3-1 defeat in which they conceded twice in the final ten minutes.

While stability remains the immediate focus of Wilkinson, his greater aspirations for the Pembroke-based outfit far exceed seasons of top-flight relegation battles.

“The aim first and foremost is to establish ourselves as a Premier Division side team again, that is the main goal right now,” he said. “I definitely believe we have the tools to compete for trophies but that is not the main priority just yet.

“I’m in no doubt we will go from strength to strength from here. All credit to the players, they have bought in to what we are trying to do from the first day of pre season and at least from the performances point of view, we are reaping the reward of that.

“As long as we have the togetherness, heart and fight among the squad I’m in no doubt that we could be challenging for trophies down the line.”

Despite coming out on the wrong end of the result against PHC at Goose Gosling Field on Sunday, Wilkinson took particular encouragement from the performance, believing his side merited at least a point.

“I will take a lot of confidence from that performance,” added Wilkinson, whose side were punished by a somewhat contentious penalty decision from referee Tashun Simons which resulted in PHC regaining the lead with nine minutes remaining.

“PHC finished second in the league last year and we matched them, that is an encouraging building block for us.

“Sometimes as a team you can feel like the referee made a bad decision but we have to keep playing on. We have to learn from this and evolve as team to certain setbacks.

“As a whole I thought me team were excellent. We stayed in the game and created enough chances to win it.

“It is just a case of us maturing in our performance throughout the match and showing a little bit more discipline. I thought we lost our heads a little but overall it was a very good performance.

“The longer the game went on we got a little tired and lost our focus slightly but for the most part we took it to them and so we definitely take a lot of confidence from this because it is definitely something to build on going forward.”