Alpha United head coach Wayne ‘Wiggy’ Dover is concerned that the team is not in top form despite the Inter-Guiana Football Cup being just about a week away.

Dover told Stabroek Sport that despite winning the recently concluded Guyana Football Federation (GFF) Super Eight Knockout Competition by a comfortable margin he estimates that the athletes are only about 50% of their peak fitness level. Though he did not accompany the team for the full run of the Super Eight games, Dover commended his assistant Gavin Brown for his efforts in helping to secure its unbeaten run in the contest, despite some players’ indiscipline regarding practice. The head coach said though he is exasperated about this issue, “There is not much we can do, I would just urge the players to come out and get things working again to regain their chemistry as early as possible to operate as a complete unit again.” Dover attended the first match of the tournament and though he judged the team’s performance as less-than-stellar, he was pleased at their 2 – 0 victory.

The coach also said he was concerned that the team completed the tournament without a proper bench; “we played most of the games in tournament by making just one or no substitution at all and also not making substitution calls when it was needed.”

The club defeated the Victoria Kings 2 – 1 in the final match on Sunday. It seemed to be a comfortable victory since they were sitting pretty for almost the entire encounter. Dover said it is not only Alpha that has been affected by the current state of football in Guyana; it is as if all the teams started the tourney at same level but Alpha had the edge because it may have had better players. “We have not played a lot of football but it was good to give the players a break coming off of the 2009 season but I think it was this made them not turn out much for preparations,” Dover said.