Cayman's U20's Slaughtered

By Sheena Carten
Caymanian Compass

Cayman's U20 footballers got hammered 7-1 by Jamaica's Seba United on Saturday. The score line, however, was perhaps too cruel.

The match was like putting kittens against lions. Seba United are former League champions. They're big men with years of experience and wins behind them. The U20s are, on the other hand, mostly youngsters, several of them playing also for the U17 team.

Bearing that in mind, the U20s did play well for periods of the game and really held Seba for about 25 min-utes in the first half. The Cayman goal came 15 minutes into the half from a penalty after Leon Whittaker was fouled. Young Chris Douglas, who had a really excellent game, stepped up and with no hesitation planted the ball in the back of the net, putting Cayman a goal in front.
Cayman's lead was, however, short lived.

Huge gaps in Cayman's defense about 20 minutes later resulted in the equaliser for Seba United. And within 10 minutes, Seba found the back of the Cayman net twice. After that and in the second half, Seba went on to score another four goals giving them a win of 7-1. A bit like the weather, the match wasn't great. Keeper Tuda Murphy would agree that he didn't have the best of games but to be fair to him, he didn't have a lot of help. It seemed as if the middle of the team just stopped playing. The defense was wide open at times and marking during periods of the game just wasn't there. When that's not there, goals are going to come.

But to be fair, playing conditions at the Truman Bodden Sports Complex were bad. The ground was really slippy. Given that Cayman did, at times, defend well and they did hold Seba United for a good bit of the first half. The on the rise U20 team did have some good possession and did have a couple of scoring chances. Despite the soaring score line, the team kept battling right until the final whistle.

In the end though none of that was enough. It's just a pity that a pathetically small crowd, at a rough guess about 40, turned up to watch these youngsters.