Nigel Si­mon

Derek King, coach of the Dig­i­cel Pro League de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons, bmo­bile Joe Pub­lic, be­lieves his team can re­tain its league crown. With five match­es left in the sea­son, Joe Pub­lic, which cap­tured a his­toric five do­mes­tic ti­tles last year un­der the King's guid­ance has 25 points from 13 match­es, five adrift of lead­ers De­fence Force. Cale­do­nia AIA is next with 24 points fol­lowed by Ma Pau with 23 and W Con­nec­tion a fur­ther point be­hind, all still in the ti­tle hunt. Speak­ing yes­ter­day, King who has al­ready guid­ed his club to the First Cit­i­zens Cup said his play­ers know they can­not af­ford to slip up in their fi­nal five match­es which will con­clude on Jan­u­ary 31.

"The top four or five clubs are on­ly sep­a­rat­ed by nine points and for us to have a chance of re­tain­ing our ti­tle, it's very im­por­tant we start win­ning from the first match when the league re­sumes on Jan­u­ary 7. "It will not be a pushover be­cause we are fac­ing Cale­do­nia which is on­ly a point be­hind us, and they too will be com­ing out to win as they chase the league lead­ers as well. "But our tech­ni­cal staff knows that we have to pre­pare the team well for what is to come and take each match as it comes and not look be­yond that." King said he ex­pects the De­fence Force to slip up af­ter the Christ­mas break.

"Dur­ing the first round they won all their match­es, but if you look at some of those en­coun­ters close­ly you would see they es­caped against Ma Pau and Di­recTV North East Stars, while we had a very poor out­ing against them as well. "To sus­tain the kind of run that they did is not that easy, and even though we had some­what of a slow start to the cam­paign we knew once we con­tin­ued to put in the hard work and take care of our match­es there was al­ways a chance of catch­ing them (De­fence Force). In ad­di­tion to Cale­do­nia, the East­ern Li­ons, who edged FC South End in its fi­nal league match be­fore the three-week Christ­mas Hol­i­days break on De­cem­ber 17, al­so have to play De­fence Force; mid-ta­ble club, Stars; St Ann's Rangers and Po­lice.

While the match­es against Cale­do­nia, De­fence Force and Stars will be con­sid­ered tough as­sign­ments, the two re­main­ing fix­tures against Rangers and Po­lice are match­es King will be cer­tain his team can take full points from.