Nigel Si­mon

Reign­ing Dig­i­cel Pro League cham­pi­on, bmo­bile Joe Pub­lic came up short in its bid to cap­ture a third Caribbean Foot­ball Union Club Cham­pi­ons Cup ti­tle, los­ing to Puer­to Ri­co's Baya­mon 3-1 at the Mar­vin Lee Sta­di­um, Ma­coya on Sun­day night. Go­ing in­to the fi­nal match of the four-team round-robin tour­na­ment, the "East­ern Li­ons", coached by Derek King, need­ed to win by four clear goals. This af­ter Puer­to Ri­co Is­landers de­feat­ed 2003 win­ner, San Juan Jabloteh 1-0 in the first match, thanks to an 18th minute head­er from Ja­maican Nicholas Ad­dlery, to end on an as­sail­able sev­en points. Jabloteh al­so had Eli­jah Man­ners red card­ed in the 87th minute to end with ten men.

The Joe Pub­lic play­ers nev­er got in­to their stride and gave one of their worst dis­plays over the last 12 months against Baya­mon, which was cheered on by the Puer­to Ri­co women's team in T&T to com­pete in the CFU Sec­ond Round qual­i­fy­ing phase for the 2010 Women's Gold Cup. Baya­mon, com­ing off of de­feats to Is­landers (3-0) and Jabloteh (4-1), went 1-0 ahead as ear­ly as the sixth minute when Daniel Vi­dal chipped the ball over the Joe Pub­lic de­fence for Alan Ri­aza to run on­to and scoop past goal­keep­er Mar­vin Phillip. It was not the start coach King was hop­ing for but Joe Pub­lic grad­u­al­ly lift­ed its game and in the 11th minute winger Hay­den Tin­to got the equalis­er with a right foot­er from in­side the area that swerved wide of the right post from a tight an­gle. Joe Pub­lic hopes was dealt a fur­ther blow when mid­field­er Trent Noel had to be re­placed by strik­er An­dre Tou­s­saint due to an in­jury in the 22nd minute.

De­spite the set­back, Joe Pub­lic drew lev­el three min­utes lat­er when tow­er­ing de­fend­er Radan­fah Abu Bakr rose high­est to meet Ka­reem Young's right sided cor­ner and plant­ed a head­er past goal­keep­er Max­i­m­il­iano Tor­la­coff. Joe Pub­lic then wast­ed two chances to go ahead, first Mar­cus Joseph blast­ed over­bar from in­side the area off a feed from Tin­to in the 26th minute fol­lowed by Ker­ry Bap­tiste's right foot­er which smashed against the base of the right post af­ter be­ing set up by a clever Tou­s­saint back-heel to leave the score 1-1 at the half. Six min­utes in­to the sec­ond-half, the nor­mal­ly re­li­able Bap­tiste missed the mark again when he turned a right sided cen­tre wide off the tar­get and with­in the blink off an eye his team was made to pay when Adri­an Brown latched on­to a through ball to fire past Phillip for a 2-1 ad­van­tage against the run of play.

Four min­utes lat­er, Baya­mon went 3-1 up when a right sided base­line pass from Ce­sar Que­sa­da was cheek­i­ly di­rect­ed past Phillip on his first post by Baya­mon cap­tain, Kendall Waston Man­ley. Any hopes of Joe Pub­lic mount­ing a come­back and scor­ing the six goals need­ed to take­out the ti­tle, all but van­ished in the 63rd minute when Bap­tiste pulled up lame with a right leg mus­cle in­jury. Bap­tiste was chas­ing af­ter a ball in the Baya­mon penal­ty-area when he grabbed the back of his leg and with his team mak­ing all three sub­sti­tu­tions al­ready, Joe Pub­lic was left to play the fi­nal 27 min­utes with ten men and in the end suc­cumbed to its first de­feat in the tour­na­ment to end in sec­ond spot with four points, one ahead of Jabloteh and Baya­mon.

The first tiebreak­er is the head-to-head record and Baya­mon FC lost, 4-1, to Jabloteh, giv­ing the T&T club third spot to join Is­landers, Joe Pub­lic in the 2010-2011 Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons League. The win for the Is­landers, which had T&T's Kendall Jagdeosingh in its start­ing line-up and Kevon Vil­laroel com­ing off the bench, was the first by a Puer­to Ri­can club in a Con­ca­caf or CFU tour­na­ment and al­so the first by a club out­side of T&T or Ja­maica. Since 1997, pro­fes­sion­al teams from T&T have won the tour­na­ment eight times and Ja­maican sides, three. The three CFU qual­i­fiers brings to 14 the num­ber of teams which have guar­an­teed it place in next sea­son's Cham­pi­ons League, leav­ing 10 spots still avail­able. The Is­landers, which reached the semi­fi­nals in 2009, joins Mex­i­co's Cruz Azul–a two-time Cham­pi­ons League run­ner-up, and Marathon of Hon­duras as the on­ly teams to qual­i­fy for the Cham­pi­ons League each year since it was in­au­gu­rat­ed.

Sun­day's CFU Re­sults

Is­landers 1 (Nicholas Ad­dlery 18th) vs Jabloteh 0.

Baya­mon 3 (Daniel Vi­dal 6th, Adri­an Brown 52nd, Kendall Waston Man­ley 56th) vs Joe Pub­lic 1 (Radan­fah Abu Bakr 25th).