Devonshire Cougars 2 Devonshire Colts 1

Devonshire Cougars were pushed to the limit by promoted rivals Colts, coming through periods of adversity to secure a derby victory in a physical Dudley Eve opener at Devonshire Recreation Club on Sunday.

The Green and Golds started confidently in possession, keeping the ball through the Colts press and quickly feeding their dangerous forward trio of Kamali Davis, Elisha Darrell and Domico Coddington, who did a good job of dropping deep to link play.

Despite their large periods of dominance and control of the tempo, Cougars were often vulnerable to the counter-attack. Colts skipper Teniko Eve was at the heart of everything the visitors did going forward, but his influence was often blunted by indecisive moments from those in front of him, especially Keino Burch, who struggled to show any of the attacking intent that helped Colts to a perfect record in the First Division last campaign.

Colts created the first meaningful opportunity of the game when Sekai Tatem linked up with Chemarl Henry, who overhit his through ball for Brandon O'Connor, and the momentum fizzled out.

That piece of good play gave Colts some confidence in possession, but a moment of indecision at the back by Jorj Dublin allowed Coddington to pinch the ball and feed Darrell to sidefoot beyond the despairing dive of young goalkeeper Jayden Mills-Furbert.

Cougars doubled their advantage moments later, this time from a good sequence of play that culminated with Darrell showing strong pace to skip past Dezion Dillas and cut inside before squeezing a low strike inside the near post.

Colts had their best spell of the match in the first ten minutes of the second half and they pulled one back within 51 seconds of the restart.

Jahkeylo Burgess, who was heavily involved with and without the ball, fired a pass into O'Connor, who played an inadvertent one-two with Henry before the latter gave Colts hope of a comeback.

The game opened up, with neither side really caring about control and the underdogs gave their hosts all they could handle and could have equalised just before the hour when Dublin drove forward and fed Tatem in space, who in turn found Henry, but the attacker took too many touches and allowed Cougars to recover.

Mills-Furbert kept Colts in the game in the final 20 minutes with at least three solid saves. Davis, who joined from Paget Lions, was fed by Darrell and forced the Colts shot-stopper into a reflex save from his rasping effort. Coddington had his most unlucky moment with about five minutes remaining with Mills making a double save, first to deny his third shot on goal and then to keep out Davis on the rebound.

Cougars head coach Kwame Steede wants more match awareness from his team.

“Every derby is tight but we didn’t manage the game well enough,” Steede said.

“We created several chances and that is a positive. However, you have to put more of those in the net.”

Scorers:

Devonshire Cougars: Darrell 33, 34

Devonshire Colts: Henry 46