Nigel Si­mon

Neal & Massy Cale­do­nia AIA will be favoured to se­cure a his­toric fourth ti­tle in the 2011/2012 T&T Pro League sea­son when it faces bit­ter ri­val De­fence Force in the $100,000 win­ner-take-all Dig­i­cel Pro Bowl fi­nal this evening. The match, the sec­ond of a dou­ble-head­er, will take place from 8 pm at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo. The fi­nal was brought for­ward from to­mor­row due to Cale­do­nia's Caribbean Foot­ball Union(CFU) Club Cham­pi­onship Group Five com­mit­ments in the Cay­man Is­lands from Sun­day. But pri­or to leav­ing T&T, Cale­do­nia, al­ready win­ners of the First Cit­i­zens Cup, T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion FA Tro­phy and Lu­cozade Sport Goal Shield will be keen to pick up an­oth­er piece of sil­ver­ware and a sec­ond Bowl ti­tle af­ter its first tri­umph in 2008 which was fol­lowed by a sec­ond place fin­ish a year lat­er. This will mean leav­ing the "Teteron Boys" to set­tle for the run­ner-up spot a third time this sea­son, at Cale­do­nia's ex­pense. And the Ja­mal Shabazz-coached "Mor­vant Stal­lions" will no doubt be brim­ming with con­fi­dence hav­ing come out on top against Ross Rus­sell's men in four of five meet­ings this cam­paign.

They in­clude the FA Tro­phy fi­nal (1-0) in March and the Goal Shield de­cider (3-1) last month. While his team has en­joyed the up­per-hand against De­fence Force, Shabazz was quick to note that most match­es be­tween both clubs were very close bat­tles. Speak­ing af­ter his team's train­ing ses­sion yes­ter­day, Shabazz said, "I think its al­ways a der­by when we meet De­fence Force. We will be go­ing all out to con­tin­ue our re­cent good run against them but at the same time we have great re­spect for them. With re­gards to his team's re­cent run of form which has seen them gone un­beat­en since ear­ly match, Shabazz said his was keen to keep up its win­ning streak as they had de­vel­oped a mo­men­tum which seems hard to stop. Asked if his team had any in­jury con­cerns an up­beat Shabazz, who saw his team slip past W Con­nec­tion 5-3 on penal­ty kicks in the semi­fi­nals af­ter a 0-0 draw said he had a full squad to se­lect from. He added, "Ac­tu­al­ly the depth of the squad is very in­ter­est­ing which has made the se­lec­tion task a very dif­fi­cult one for my­self and as­sis­tant Jer­ry Moe.

"In the semi­fi­nal we rest­ed our cen­tral de­fen­sive pair of Radan­fah Abu Bakr and Nu­ru Ab­dul­lah Mo­ham­mad and used Kem­ron Pur­cell and Guyanese 19-year-old in­ter­na­tion­al Collin Nel­son and they did a great job. "So now for the fi­nal we now find our­selves in a se­lec­tion quandary, but this is all good for the team. A win for Cale­do­nia will see it join­ing W Con­nec­tion (2004 & 2007), Adams' Con­struc­tion San Juan Jabloteh (2005 & 2006) and Joe Pub­lic (2009 & 2010/11) as two-time win­ners. Mean­while, De­fence Force has pledged "foot­ball war" against Cale­do­nia as it hunts its first ti­tle of the sea­son af­ter re­lin­quish­ing its league ti­tle with a fourth place fin­ish. In the semi­fi­nals, De­fence Force he Ross Rus­sell coached out­fit has been beat­en in two fi­nals by Shabazz's out­fit, 1-0 and 3-1 re­spec­tive­ly in the FA and Goal Shield against Cale­do­nia but plans to change things this time around. "This is the fi­nal match of the sea­son and we would be giv­ing it every­thing we got." A for­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er who has done well to get his team to three fi­nals af­ter a late kick-off to its sea­son due to the State of Emer­gency Rus­sell said boast­ed his side is very pre­pared for Cale­do­nia un­like the pre­vi­ous fi­nal meet­ings.

Rus­sell, who con­sid­ers his friend­ship with Shabazz a very good one, added, "On the field it would be a foot­ball war. It would be a tech­ni­cal and tac­ti­cal clash of two teams that are from very dif­fer­ent back­grounds." He con­tin­ued, "You can ex­pect De­fence Force to come out win­ners this time around. We are com­ing out to win the game. We are go­ing to rise above every­thing. Re­flect­ing on the Goal Shield fi­nal, Rus­sell said, "In the last fi­nal against Cale­do­nia, it's just that they got the goals on the day. How­ev­er we had the bet­ter chances but just didn't put them away." For to­day's match, Rus­sell will once again have to cope with­out the ser­vices of sev­en key se­nior play­ers in Kevon Carter, An­ton Joseph, Ronald St Louis, Ke­ston Williams and Sean Nar­cis, Ster­ling O'Brien and Dex­ter Pacheco who are all out due to work du­ties (Ca­da) and cap­tain Corey Rivers, still out due to in­jury. Iron­i­cal­ly, it was the same De­fence Force which was beat­en by Cale­do­nia in the 2008 fi­nal, 2-0 with goals from Kendall Velox and a Corey Rivers own-goal, both of whom will have no im­pact on to­day's en­counter. Pri­or to the Pro Bowl fi­nal, Trinci­ty Na­tion­als and Re­al Di­men­sion will meet in a Women's Foot­ball League Pre­mier Di­vi­sion en­counter from 6 pm.