Dennis Brown, the Devonshire Cougars coach, has praised Dandy Town for their successful season after winning their third Premier Division title in five seasons.

Brown, who coached Cougars to their first Triple Crown last season, singled out Damon Ming as the main inspiration for Town, tipping the experienced winger to claim the Most Valuable Player award.

“Primarily my hat goes off to Damon Ming who I think is a champion for Dandy Town,” said Brown, whose side lost 7-2 to Town at the weekend, as their opponents claimed the title.

“Damon sets a very good example for the young guys by his work ethic and is very humble and is definitely my MVP for the season.

“I’ve been impressed with Damon all year, he has a high work rate and high work ethic. Congratulations to Dandy Town, they put in the work from pre-season up to now and deserve to win the league.”

Cougars went into Sunday’s match determined to make Town work for their second title of the season. Town took an early lead only for Cougars to hit back with two quick goals.

Town then responded with two goals themselves to lead 3-2 at the interval and then steamrolled Cougars off the park with four unanswered goals in the second half as Ming and Angelo Simmons both netted twice.

“They wanted it a bit more,” Brown said. “I thought we did well to come back into the game but at the end of the day they had a lot more to play for than we did and took advantage of that.

“We wanted to make it a bit difficult for them, but at the end of the day you get out what you put in and we haven’t put in any time.”

Town sent out an early message that they intended to be the team to beat this season. They defeated Cougars in the Dudley Eve final, replaced Cougars as the league champions after handing them their biggest loss of the season. On Sunday, Town will look to complete the league and FA Cup double, a feat they managed two years ago.

“I’m pretty confident in the ability of my players and as long as we show up on the day our chances of being successful are high,” said Jomar Wilkinson, the Town coach.

“As long as we play as a team, like we did [against Cougars], I feel we can beat anybody on any given day. We want to be in the big conversation and in order to be in the big conversation we have to win trophies.”

Cougars’ only consolation was qualifying for next season’s Dudley Eve, finishing fifth, eight points behind the champions.

“It’s a major disappointment for me, we worked hard to get where we were, but we didn’t work harder to try to stay where we were and the results show,,” said Brown, who has been heavily critical of his players’ commitment to training this season.