Richard Bryan, Star Writer

According to their coach Barry Watson, weak zone compilation contributed to one of this season's fancied teams, Manchester High, faltering in the daCosta Cup inter-zone second round.

"We are doing our assessment and that, we strongly feel, is one of the factors," said Watson, who guided Manchester to last year's daCosta Cup final against St Elizabeth Technical, told Star Sports.

Even though they had lost three key players - striker Jason Johnson, captain Baron Watson Jr and Romeno Bowie - to scholarships at American universities, their historic performance in reaching the final, as well as a strong preseason record, had landed them a status as one of the teams to watch.

In romping to five straight wins without conceding a goal, Manchester went on to score 42 goals in the first round. At this stage higher than that tally has only been achieved by seven of the eight teams vying for semi-final slots.

whopping 30 goals

Manchester's problem is that a whopping 30 of those goals were scored against Alston and Cross Keys High, two teams that would have a minnow status almost anywhere. To emphasise the weak state of the zone, those two teams scored goals against three others, while in the case of Cross Keys, they were able to win three matches and draw one.

Despite easily winning the zone after only dropping points against Spaldings High, who also advanced, Manchester's early form only continued for the first week, after play broke for the daCosta Cup round to facilitate the playing of the Ben Francis Knockout Cup.

At this juncture, they beat Clarendon College on penalties after having to score an equaliser in the final seconds of stoppage time; then beat Glenmuir 2-1 before losing to Paul Bogle 1-0 in the semi-finals.

The team's inadequacies were then exposed when the real deal started in the daCosta Cup. Goals that seemed so easy to get in the first round, now seemed impossible to mine and they could only produced a 0-0 draw against Lennon, earn a 1-1 against Manning's, while failing to score in a 1-0 loss to Munro.

However, as it relates to the balance of the various zones, there could be hope on the horizon for teams who faced similar scenarios to Manchester. Star Sports has learned that discussions coming out of a meeting of the various zone chairmen of the Inter-Secondary Sports Association (ISSA) last week, suggests there are recommendations on the table to field a two-tiered format.