Nigel Si­mon

Strik­er Akim Arm­strong net­ted a goal on ei­ther side of the half as two-time run­ner-up Cale­do­nia AIA blanked Di­recTV North East Stars 2–0 in their T&T Pro League First Cit­i­zens Cup quar­ter­fi­nal day three clash to se­cure a semi­fi­nal spot on Fri­day. This was in the sec­ond match of a dou­ble-head­er at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo. Both Cale­do­nia and Stars went in­to the match with­out a point af­ter de­feats in their re­spec­tive match­es against six-time win­ner W Con­nec­tion.

How­ev­er, Cale­do­nia on­ly need­ed to draw to qual­i­fy for the semi­fi­nals, as it had a bet­ter goal dif­fer­ence to Stars' of mi­nus two to mi­nus three. Af­ter a cau­tious start Arm­strong cap­i­talised on some slop­py de­fend­ing from Stars to beat goal­keep­er An­drew Du­rant low to his left for the open­er in the 37th minute and five min­utes af­ter the restart, he added his sec­ond, rac­ing down the cen­tre of the Stars' de­fence be­fore eas­i­ly beat­ing the goal­keep­er. With the win, Cale­do­nia set up a semi­fi­nal clash on Fri­day with Group A win­ner, Adams' Con­struc­tion San Juan Jabloteh, which bat­tled past St Ann's Rangers 2–1 in Fri­day's first match.

Both teams end­ed the con­test with ten men af­ter Rangers de­fend­er Jevon Mor­ris (40th) and Jabloteh's Joel Rus­sell (79th) were red card­ed. Jabloteh, which bat­tled back from a 4–1 deficit to draw 4–4 with T&TEC in its tour­na­ment open­er on Tues­day, opened the scor­ing in tithe 24th minute via the in­form Willis Plaza, his third goal in two match­es. Rangers' task of fight­ing its way back in­to the con­test was then made tougher when Mor­ris was red card­ed in the 40th minute for a nasty tack­le on Luke Gul­lick, Jabloteh's hero in the last match, with his 89th minute equalis­er.

How­ev­er, against the run of play, Rangers stunned Jabloteh a minute lat­er when the nip­py Shaquille Nes­bitt got the equalis­er to leave both clubs lev­el at 1–1 at the in­ter­val. Jabloteh re­gained the lead in the 61st minute through Ja­son Mar­cano, but 11 min­utes from full-time Rangers was gift­ed a life­line when Jabloteh was re­duced to ten men as well fol­low­ing the ex­pul­sion of de­fend­er Joel Rus­sell, for a pro­fes­sion­al foul on strik­er De­von Mod­este on the edge of the 18-yard box.

Both teams then con­tin­ued to cre­ate a num­ber of chances, but luck­i­ly for Jabloteh, goal­keep­er Cleon John was in im­pec­ca­ble form and pre­served his team's lead which guar­an­teed a semi­fi­nal spot along with league debu­tants, T&TEC. In the oth­er semi­fi­nal, W Con­nec­tion will meet the "Elec­tric­i­ty Boys" with the win­ner ad­vanc­ing to the fi­nal card­ed for Oc­to­ber 14 at the same venue. The win­ner of this year's com­pe­ti­tion will walk away with $80,000, while the run­ner-up gets $20,000.

Re­sults

Jabloteh 2 (Willis Plaza 24th, Ja­son Mar­cano 61st) vs St Ann's Rangers 1 (Shaquille Nes­bitt 41st)

Cale­do­nia 2 (Akim Arm­strong 37th, 49th) vs North East Stars 0

Fix­tures

Semi­fi­nals:

Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 30:

T&TEC vs W Con­nec­tion

Jabloteh vs Cale­do­nia

Fi­nal:

Oc­to­ber 14

Stand­ings

Group A

Teams P W D L F A Pts

Jabloteh 2 1 1 0 6 5 4

T&TEC 2 0 2 0 4 4 2

Rangers 2 0 1 1 1 2 1

Group B

W Con­nec­tion 2 2 0 0 8 3 6

Cale­do­nia 2 1 0 1 4 4 3

NE Stars 2 0 0 2 1 6 0