In the wake of Cen­tral FC's 2-0 loss to Ja­maica’s Mount Pleas­ant FC in the Con­ca­caf Caribbean Cup at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain on Tues­day night, coach Julius Ed­wards said things didn’t go the way they want­ed.

Not on­ly were the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League (TTPFL) Tier I Cen­tral Sharks beat­en, but they were out­played for most of the match, de­spite be­ing at home.

Ed­wards, who took over the team from Ja­son Spence af­ter its sec­ond-place po­si­tion in the TTPFL ear­li­er this year, said at the post-match press con­fer­ence that there were kinks in their struc­ture and the op­po­nents cap­i­talised on it.

He said, “I ac­cept that we lost to­day (Tues­day). In the first 45 min­utes, we man­aged it; we had our game plan. In the sec­ond 45 min­utes, they came on, but we just didn’t stand up to the pace of the game, and we end­ed up los­ing our shape and dis­ci­pline.

"The op­por­tu­ni­ties that came for us in the first half we didn't score, and the team came out run­ning, so we were spread and lost our shape, so they cap­i­talised on it.”

Ed­wards' team will re­fo­cus for the start of the new TTPFL sea­son. Last sea­son, the Cen­tral Sharks got a fly­ing start to the League un­der Spence but fad­ed mid­way through. The team lat­er re­turned to fin­ish strong­ly in a close bat­tle with Mis­cel­la­neous Po­lice for the run­ner-up spot.

Coach­ing in the Con­ca­caf Caribbean Cup play-off for the first time, Ed­wards said, “The Pro League sea­son is ahead, so we will re­group. We will have con­ver­sa­tions with the man­age­ment staff on what we want to pur­sue for the next sea­son and try to get back here and give a bet­ter show­ing of our­selves for the next sea­son.”

Mean­while, Ja­maica’s for­mer mid­field mae­stro Theodore Whit­more said, “I am very pleased with the re­sult, but not so much the per­for­mance. It was a well-de­served re­sult. I think the crowd de­served this. We cre­at­ed his­to­ry, as it’s the first time in the his­to­ry of the club that we qual­i­fied for a semi­fi­nal spot in the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU), and cred­it must be giv­en to the own­ers of the club.

“We dropped the ball last sea­son, we did not make it, but this time we licked our wounds, stuck with the ma­jor­i­ty of the play­ers, tech­ni­cal staff, and we came back to cre­ate his­to­ry. The feel­ing is great.

"This is some­thing we worked hard for over the past cou­ple of months to achieve, but the job is not yet done. This is just one step clos­er to where we want to reach, so we don’t want to get car­ried away, and we don’t want to get over-con­fi­dent. We have a game next week back in Ja­maica, and we just want to keep go­ing,” Whit­more said.