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SPOTLIGHT ~ Tremaine Stewart (Portmore United) Wednesday October 07th , 2009
Portmore United’s Tremaine Stewart - Coming of age |
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Portmore United start as my firm favourites to take the Digicel Premier League for the 2009-10 season. The team, formerly from Clarendon, which has made a permanent home in St Catherine, was the busiest team this pre-season.
Outside of starting training very early, Portmore has also been very busy in the transfer market. Those two realities have meant a number of things. For starters, the team will have some injuries early in the season, but they have compensated for that with some interesting trades.
On a more particular note, there is a young man at Portmore United who impresses me. He isn’t the only player who has done so but he is worthy of note nonetheless. I thought he was a good player three years ago but his pre-season efforts have made me even more interested.
Tremaine Stewart made his debut in the Premier League for August Town and was relegated with them two seasons ago. Now he is an integral part of the Portmore unit. In a practice match recently, I watched the young man, and I say young because he was a schoolboy, playing for Eltham High School just two years ago, control a ball and dismiss two players with disdain before making a lovely pass. This was his first touch of the game, and that touch spoke volumes.
At August Town, he had begun to struggle a little, and for the most part that had to do with confidence. Making the jump from playing in the Manning Cup to being an important member of a Premier League outfit is not an easy one. Sometimes you will fail. Those failures will cause, especially young players, to doubt their ability. Stewart doubted his.
Basic elements of the game became difficult for him, but that first touch in that pre-season practice match against another premier league team no less, suggests Stewart is over the worst.
The youngster also had injury worries to get over. After a season of Manning Cup with Eltham a few years ago, Stewart was hurt. His knee had to be heavily bandaged before games and he would have to play through a fair amount of pain. His importance to August Town meant he never really got time to recover and it impacted on his performances.
Portmore has a much deeper squad than do August Town and that fact has allowed Stewart the time to recover and to grow. Maybe now the full potential of Stewart can come out. In fact, nursing a slight ankle injury, there was not much need for Stewart in Portmore United’s first game, which was incidentally against August Town. Portmore won 1-0 thanks to a late goal from Roen Nelson.