Only hours before a game vital to their football careers, it would have been reasonable to expect the Tivoli Gardens trio of Roland Dean, Navion Boyd and Oraine Simpson to be twitching with nervous energy.

At stake against Haiti in a friendly international two weeks ago were precious places on Jamaica's team to the CONCACAF Gold Cup in July.

Yet Dean, Boyd and Simpson were calm, sharing jokes in the team's hotel lobby. Less than one week earlier their mood was very different. Then Tivoli, forced to win to keep alive their hope of clinching the Digicel Premier League (DPL) title, battled Arnett Gardens at home. For Dean and Boyd, the pressure on May 17 was bubbling over. The one-two Tivoli strike punch scored half of the team's goals, with Dean notching 19 and Boyd eight. But neither could take the field against their club's long-time rivals. Both were on suspension for an accumulation of cautions. When needed most, Tivoli's top marksmen would not be able to fire. And it hurt.

"It kinda did break me down," admitted Dean, "because I know that it's me and Navion Boyd, striking partners all season were playing, and the last game of the season, the most important game of the season, the both of us not gonna play."

ideal scenario

The equation was simple. Despite their roaring comeback to close the gap in the last part of the DPL campaign, Tivoli needed a win against Arnett. Still, if leaders Portmore United won against Harbour View in east Kingston on that same day, the west Kingston club would have lost anyway. Tivoli's ideal scenario was to win and hope Portmore lost or drew.

Yet without their top scorers, Tivoli's job became that more difficult. The supporters knew it too.

"The people were like, 'So who is gonna score the goals?'," Dean recalled. "They were kinda nervous, because they know that going into the game it was a must-win."

To compound the frustration, Dean, who only discovered he would miss the Arnett game the day before the 'Junglists' visited, was still bitter over the way he had been excluded. His final yellow card was not for violent, physical play, but dissent - talking - to the match official.

"Most of all, I was vexed bout that," the 27-year-old said.

For Boyd, the disappointment was even more. While Dean had already lifted Jamaica's top club title, the 22-year-old had never won. He had also been ejected from the Flow Champions Cup knockout semi-final, only to be absent from a final which saw the west Kingston team lose 3-0 to rivals Boys' Town. In addition, his coach Lenworth Hyde Sr had warned him to avoid further cautions.

"It was a whole heap of pressure on me," Boyd said, "because if Tivoli had lost the game, or even if we had won the game and Portmore (United) had won (the title), I think everybody would have come down on me and Roland because we were not out there to get the job done."

Boyd seriously thought of skipping the final DPL showdown at the Tivoli Sports Complex (TSC).

"At one point I was asking myself, 'Go to the game?'," he said.

30th-minute penalty

But the strike pair showed up, pinning their hopes on their teammates. Simpson was singled out. Dean and Boyd put the burden squarely on him. He didn't back away.

"I feel a lot of pressure," Simpson admitted, "because with them (Dean and Boyd) out, I did tell them that it was going to rest upon me. And they did tell me that too."

Simpson did not let them down. He calmly slotted home a 30th-minute penalty which would eventually prove enough to secure Tivoli's win. It did not immediately erase all the tension. Boyd and Dean turned their attention to the Harbour View Mini Stadium, where Portmore and the home team were locked in a goalless battle. Broadcast commentary from the TSC kept them up to date.

"I was more focused on the Portmore game," admitted Dean. "It was nerve-wracking though."

"From we scored, we just wanted Harbour View and Portmore match to just blow off," Boyd added.The final whistle from both games left Tivoli and Portmore locked on 72 points. But the west Kingston team snatched the DPL crown with a better goal difference. The relief was welcomed by the two missing forwards.

"It was one of the sweetest feelings, you know, in a long while," said Dean.

"Everybody's happy," Boyd added with a laugh. "People even forget that we weren't out on the pitch."

As for Simpson, the team's hero and a close friend of Dean and Boyd, well, he was just happy to return an outstanding favour. "They bailed me out nuff time, you know," he said smiling. "So you have to bail them out when you get the chance."