NEW YORK-Guyana suf­fered their sec­ond loss in five days when they were blitzed by Cos­ta Ri­ca but Ja­maica's Reg­gae Boyz had their progress stymied when they were held to a frus­trat­ing nil-all draw by An­tigua, in the third round of CON­CA­CAF 2014 World Cup qual­i­fiers on Tues­day night. Play­ing at the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um at Prov­i­dence in George­town, Guyana were un­done by Al­varo Sa­bo­rio's hat-trick to lose 0-4 af­ter find­ing them­selves down 0-2 at half-time. The Re­al Salt Lake for­ward put the vis­i­tors on the score­sheet as ear­ly as the 20th minute af­ter be­ing set up by Bryan Oviedo and dou­bled the lead six min­utes lat­er as Cos­ta Ri­ca as­sumed com­mand of the fix­ture. Sa­bo­rio com­plet­ed his hat-trick sev­en min­utes af­ter the half­time break when he com­bined again with Oviedo to dis­man­tle Guyana's back line. Joel Camp­bell then added Cos­ta Ri­ca's fourth, 13 min­utes from the end to pile on the mis­ery for Guyana who al­so lost to Mex­i­co last Fri­day. In St John's, the Reg­gae Boyz' hopes of etch­ing their sec­ond win were dashed when An­tigua pro­duced a ster­ling de­fen­sive ef­fort to steal a point at the Vi­vian Richards Sta­di­um.

The vis­i­tors were de­fied in large part by goal­keep­er Molvin James who mus­tered a Her­culean ef­fort be­tween the up­rights to keep a clean sheet. Clad in gold, An­tigua were cheered on by an es­ti­mat­ed 8 000 spec­ta­tors who chant­ed the team's moniker "Ben­na Boys, Ben­na Boys, Ben­na Boys" through­out the game. That did not faze the favoured Reg­gae Boys who spent much of the first half try­ing to get past James. James kept out sev­er­al at­tempts by the Ja­maicans, in­clud­ing a gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty from Je­vaughn Wat­son 18 min­utes in­to the sec­ond half.

Mean­while An­tiguan strik­er Pe­ter By­ers brought his side close to scor­ing in the 23rd minute of play but he shot straight at goalie Dwayne Miller, in for reg­u­lar cus­to­di­an Dono­van Rick­etts who was in­jured. An­oth­er at­tempt in the sec­ond half saw By­ers weav­ing his way through the Ja­maican de­fense but the ball was swept inch­es away from the cross­bar. Ja­maica, who beat Guatemala in their open­er last week­end, have four points in Group A along with the Unit­ed States while An­tigua are bot­tom of the stand­ings with one point. The US, mean­while, were held to a 1-1 draw by the Guatemalans af­ter Clint Dempsey put them ahead five min­utes be­fore half-time and Mar­co Pa­pa equalised with sev­en min­utes re­main­ing. In Group C, Cu­ba lost their sec­ond straight with a 0-1 loss in Pana­ma City while Cana­da and Hon­duras drew nil-all in Toron­to. Gi­ants Mex­i­co, how­ev­er, kept up their win­ning run when Hec­tor Moreno scored eight min­utes from time to seal a 2-1 win in San Sal­vador. (CMC)