Sixth former Nicholas McCreath, outstanding footballer of 1995/96, juggles with future baller Leroux Lothian as Sean Thompson looks on. (KC Melbourne Park 1995).
“Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, i’m very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.” -
Bill Shankley, Manager of Liverpool FC from 1959 to 1974.
KC last won the Manning Cup in 1986. Eddie Seaga was Prime Minister then, that’s how long ago that was. And the legendary George Thompson was the coach. The drought is in its 21st year. Prior to this drought the longest football drought at North Street was from 1929 when KC first entered the competition to 1949 when we first won, a period of twenty years. For much of that time ‘Priest’s school’ probably had less than one hundred and fifty students and probably only six could play any decent football so it should not have been a surprise that much bigger and established schools like Wolmer’s, STGC and JC had a strangle hold on the Cup.
The question however is, why haven’t we won the Cup since 1986. (We did win the Walker Cup a couple times since – but according to the football aficionados, that does not count!) In my opinion the answer is rather simple: other schools have been better at football. Since 1986 KC has had many coaches who have all gone winless. I will not name these coaches, since anyone who follows the football fortunes of KC over the years will know who they were.
Since ‘86 KC had a few teams that went perilously close to winning the Manning Cup, but didn’t. I recall that at the turn of the century KC played Norman Manley in the finals with my good friend Stratton Palmer as the coach. Despite being slight favourites, the team lost that game and many tears were shed.
Five years prior to that KC was odds-on favourite to win the Cup but ISSA, in its infinite wisdom, while claiming indiscipline and crowd trouble in both the Manning and Decosta Cups, aborted the competitions with half the season to go and with KC having won all its five games by large margins. That KC team had a prolific striker called Nicholas ‘Helmet’ McCreath, arguably the best ‘baller’ from the College in the past decade. (He had an equally impressive football career at the college level in the USA and until quite recently he was still a potent striker in the Premier League for Harbour View)
So what does it take to win the Manning Cup? From my observations it seems that there are four key ingredients to football success at this level. Firstly, a good coach. Secondly, the school will need a good squad of players (preferably in their late teens). Thirdly, the coach will need that elusive ingredient – money and finally, a bit of luck. Probably we have not had a confluence of all these four factors at KC in the past 21 years.
