Nigel Si­mon

For­mer De­fence Force mem­ber De­vorn Jorsling came back to haunt his old em­ploy­ers as his late strike earned a 1-0 win for Neal & Massy Cale­do­nia AIA in the T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion FA Tro­phy fi­nal at the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um, Mara­bel­la on Sun­day night. Jorsling, who led the De­fence Force to the Dig­i­cel Pro League ti­tle dur­ing the 2010 sea­son be­fore sign­ing for Or­lan­do City af­ter which he signed for his home-town club Cale­do­nia, got the de­cid­ing item in the 81st minute. A pass from mid­field­er At­u­al­la Guer­ra saw Jorsling elude de­fend­er Devin Jor­dan and fir­ing past goal­keep­er Kevin "Barthez" Gra­ham. Cale­do­nia which al­so won the FA tro­phy in 2008, earned $60,000, 23 gold medals and the pres­ti­gious tro­phy while a dis­ap­point­ed De­fence Force, six-time win­ners' had to set­tle for $40,000 and 23 sil­ver medals. The Ross Rus­sell-coached De­fence Force start­ed bet­ter and looked the like­li­er of the two teams to score as they dom­i­nat­ed an out-of-sync Cale­do­nia.

But de­spite pos­ses­sion, the "Teteron Boys" had noth­ing to show at the in­ter­val main­ly due to poor fin­ish­ing from Richard "Sha­ka" Roy and Kevon Carter, and some good goal­keep­ing from Cale­do­nia's Guyanese in­ter­na­tion­al shot-stop­per in Ron­son Williams. The sec­ond-half was a much more com­pet­i­tive af­fair and just when it looked as though penal­ty-kicks would be re­quired to de­cide the out­come, Jorsling struck. Speak­ing af­ter the win an elat­ed Jorsling said it was a great feel­ing to win even though he was filled with mixed emo­tions. "See­ing my for­mer team-mates on the oth­er side of the field sad was not a good thing, but as a pro­fes­sion­al play­er you have to put those emo­tions aside when you step on­to the field," added 28-year-old Jorsling. Last week in the semi­fi­nal round at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um, Mal­abar, Cale­do­nia which is still in the fray for the Dig­i­cel Pro League ti­tle al­so won 1-0 over W Con­nec­tion, FA cham­pi­ons in 1999, 2000 and 2002, with mid­field­er Guer­ra net­ting the lone goal in the 35th minute while De­fence Force held on for a 3-2 tri­umph over 2004 win­ner and Su­per League club, WASA af­ter tak­ing a 2-0 lead.