A new win­ner will be crowned in this year's T&T Pro League First Cit­i­zens Cup com­pe­ti­tion which kicks off with a new for­mat in a dou­ble-head­er quar­ter­fi­nal at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo to­mor­row from 5 pm. In the open­er, league debu­tants T&TEC, com­ing off a sur­prise 2-1 league win against Di­recTV North East Stars will meet St Ann's Rangers in a Group A clash. Two hours lat­er, six-time win­ner W Con­nec­tion, al­so com­ing off a 2-1 tri­umph in its sea­son open­er against Rangers comes up against Cale­do­nia AIA. Last year, bmo­bile Joe Pub­lic de­feat­ed 2009 win­ner, De­fence Force 3-0 on penal­ty-kicks af­ter a 1-1 draw in a re­match of the fi­nal from the pre­vi­ous year.

How­ev­er, this time around, both teams will not be in­volved in the com­pe­ti­tion due to var­i­ous rea­sons.

Pri­or to the start of the 2011/2012 Dig­i­cel T&T Pro League, Joe Pub­lic with­drew its team from the league due to a num­ber of dif­fer­ences with the T&T Pro League board while De­fence Force was forced to post­pone its in­volve­ment due to its play­ers be­ing called up­on to per­form their mil­i­tary du­ties, im­posed by the T&T Gov­ern­ment since Au­gust 16. In ad­di­tion to T&TEC and Rangers, 2000 and 2003 tour­na­ment win­ner Adam's Con­struc­tion San Juan Jabloteh is al­so in Group A while Stars, a run­ner-up in 2006 is the oth­er Group B team. In pre­vi­ous years, the tour­na­ment was con­test­ed on a straight knock­out com­pe­ti­tion, how­ev­er, this year the teams will com­pete on a round-robin ba­sis in their re­spec­tive groups un­til Fri­day Sep­tem­ber 23 af­ter which the top two will ad­vance to crossover semi­fi­nals on Sep­tem­ber 30 fol­lowed by the fi­nal on Fri­day Oc­to­ber 14.

The win­ner of this year's com­pe­ti­tion will walk away with $80,000 while the run­ner-up will get $20,000.

Dur­ing his brief ad­dress, War­ren Sook­dar, First Cit­i­zen's chief in­for­ma­tions of­fi­cer said his com­pa­ny, which has spon­sored the tour­na­ment for a decade was proud to be part of a league that has and con­tin­ues to de­vel­op the raw tal­ent of the na­tion's youth. With re­gards to the tour­na­ment, Sook­dar said spec­ta­tors can con­tin­ue to look for­ward to the ever pop­u­lar "Dash for Cash" as well as the "Biggest Cool­er Crew" pro­mo­tions in ad­di­tion to give­aways for the first 500 spec­ta­tors at the se­mi, and 1000 spec­ta­tors at the fi­nal.

FIX­TURES

Group A: T&TEC, St Ann's Rangers, San Juan Jabloteh

Group B: W Con­nec­tion, Cale­do­nia AIA, North East Stars

Venue: Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo

Quar­ter­fi­nal Day 1

Fri­day Sept 16:

T&TEC vs St Ann's Rangers

W Con­nec­tion vs Cale­do­nia

Quar­ter­fi­nal Day 2

Tues­day Sept 20:

T&TEC vs Jabloteh

W Con­nec­tion vs North East Stars

Quar­ter­fi­nal Day 3

Fri­day Sept 23:

St Ann's Rangers vs Jabloteh

Cale­do­nia vs North East Stars

Semi­fi­nals:

Fri­day Sept 30

A 1 vs B 2

A 2 vs B 1

Fi­nal - Oc­to­ber 14