Dandy Town coach Jarreau Hayward has described the Premier Division encounter with PHC at Devonshire Rec on Friday night as a tough test.

Town, unbeaten this season in the league and Dudley Eve Trophy, face a PHC side reeling from a 3-0 loss last week to X-Roads, who top the standings on goal difference.

“It’s going to be a tough game on a tricky field,” Hayward told The Royal Gazette.

“There are a lot of elements that add up to it being a tough game, so we just have to be ready and try to keep our momentum going. The only thing I'm looking for is execution of our principles and after that we’ll see what happens.”

Hayward is keen to put Dandy Town’s performance this season down to renewed commitment to training by his players.

“We are following our protocol and our processes, something that we’ve developed all season,” said Hayward, who won the FA Cup in 2024 as coach of St George’s.

“The players’ buy-in has been absolutely phenomenal and we just need to continue to trust the process.

“We’ll see where that lands us at the end of the season. Also, what's working is we're just taking it a game at a time, approaching it how we need to approach it.

“We’re having intense and focused training sessions and it’s just a matter of getting everybody on the same page, understanding our general principles and executing on those.

“After that, maybe we can make a tweak or two to cater to what we think we’ll be up against.

“For PHC, it’s no different and they have a lot of skilled players used to winning trophies. They’re always in contention and I know they’ll be prepared, so we just have to be ready.”

Hayward is unhappy that Town are being made to play on Friday after they had three players on duty for Bermuda in Jamaica on Tuesday in Danté Leverock, Lejaun Simmons and David Jones.

This game was originally scheduled to be played at Goose Gosling Field on Saturday, but as a result of that ground being unavailable the Bermuda Football Association moved the game forward 24 hours to Devonshire Rec.

“I understand those doing the scheduling at the BFA have a really difficult job,” Hayward said.

“But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I was hopeful that they would take into consideration that we have three key players that played a really difficult game on Tuesday.

“Danté played 90 minutes in a tough game, Lejuan played 66 minutes and David played 45 minutes.

“Now we’re playing on a Friday, 72 hours later and take into consideration that they had to travel as well. It’s difficult even for a professional to make that turnaround.

“But we’re not going to make any excuses. We’ll evaluate them to figure out if they are going to be involved. If they aren’t involved, then we have a deep team. A lot of the players that were injured and those that were on suspension are coming back.

“So, we will have no problem replacing them, but obviously there will be some quality missing if they don’t play.”

PHC coach Cecoy Robinson is hoping his side will bounce back after the loss to X-Roads.

“It’s going to be a tough game as we need to be able to bounce back from our last defeat,” Robinson said.

“For us, it's about putting our heads down and trying to get the result that we need. We've made some adjustments from the last match and I hope those adjustments bring results for us.

“We can’t afford to play like we did against X-Roads. Our loss was down to lack of commitment and we have to do the right thing to get a result against Dandy Town.

“Everybody should be up for the game. Whatever went wrong against X-Roads should rectify itself just from it being a big game as well.

Since taking over from Quincy Hunt as PHC head coach, Robinson is still trying to implement his philosophy at the club.

“We see it in spurts but not completely,” the PHC coach said.

“Being that I’ve just come on as a coach, we need to start playing more consistently and I think if we do we’ll be fine for the season.”