An­drew Gioan­net­ti

Goals from Den­zil Gill and Shaquille Hold­er in ei­ther half for Cara­pichaima East Sec­ondary, put the Cen­tral Zone cham­pi­on in­to this year's Na­tion­al BGTT/First Cit­i­zens Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League "Big-Five" semi­fi­nal, fol­low­ing a nar­row 2-1 win over Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary.This was at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va, yes­ter­day.Gill found the open­er in the 25th minute, for a lead which Cara­pichaima would hold un­til the half.Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the half-time in­ter­val, Cara­pichaima came out with in­tent and got their sec­ond item with­in sec­onds when Hold­er ran past the Scar­bor­ough de­fence to fin­ish eas­i­ly past Ke­mo Gar­den­er in goal.

Scar­bor­ough suf­fered a blow at the dis­missal of Semel Crichlow, close to the hour mark. Crichlow was shown the red for a foul on Hold­er, who was on a free run at goal. Hold­er was a tor­ment on the day, hav­ing sev­er­al chances to put the team fur­ther ahead.The To­ba­go team, how­ev­er, were able to find a re­ply, min­utes lat­er when Christo­pher Mor­gan placed his head­er past goal­keep­er Demetrius Ed­wards, in the 66th minute to make it 2-1.The 2001 na­tion­al cham­pi­on, Scar­bor­ough were un­able to find a sec­ond item de­spite mo­ments of pres­sure, re­sult­ing in a semi­fi­nal berth for Cara­pichaima.

Cara­pichaima now meets first-time South Zone cham­pi­on, Shi­va Boys' in the sec­ond semi­fi­nal at Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um, Mara­bel­la on Mon­day from 4pm.On Fri­day, back-to-back North Zone win­ner St An­tho­ny's Col­lege comes up against new­ly crowned East Zone cham­pi­on, El Do­ra­do East at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo from 4pm.This af­ter "El Do" dubbed the "Blue Thun­der" roared past last year's zon­al and na­tion­al cham­pi­on St Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary in their zon­al de­cider, 2-1 in the sec­ond match of a re-sched­uled dou­ble-head­er at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um, Mal­abar, Ari­ma.

Dwight Quin­tero opened the scor­ing in the 15th minute for the "Blue Thun­der when he beat "Green Ma­chine" goal­keep­er Ker­ron Jones from close range af­ter elud­ing his mark­er.Two min­utes in­to the sec­ond-half, the "Green Ma­chine" which need­ed a vic­to­ry to take the crown drew lev­el via a free-kick from cap­tain Ja­mal Creighton which took a de­flec­tion on its way past "Blue Thun­der" goal­keep­er Ha­keem Lu­cas.But with 14 min­utes left to play, Jameel Forde re­gained the lead for the Trevor Spicer-coached "Blue Thun­der"while Quin­tero al­so saw an ef­fort crash off the cross-bar in the fi­nal minute, with Forde mis­cu­ing the fol­low-up at­tempt.With the win El Do­ra­do end­ed the league cam­paign with 30 points from 12 match­es, three more than Ari­ma North Sec­ondary which blanked San Juan North 2-0 in the open­er.El Do­ra­do now shifts its at­ten­tion to the na­tion­al "Big Five" se­mi-fi­nal where it faces North Zone cham­pi­on, St An­tho­ny's Col­lege at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um on Fri­day from 4pm for a spot in the na­tion­al Fi­nal on No­vem­ber 3.

Fi­nal Zon­al stand­ings

Teams P W D L F A Pts

North

St An­tho­ny's 12 12 0 0 32 7 36

East Mu­cu­rapo 12 8 2 2 26 13 26

Fa­ti­ma 12 5 1 6 16 18 16

QRC 12 4 3 5 22 20 15

St Mary's 12 4 1 7 16 16 13

Trin­i­ty 12 4 0 8 14 27 12

Mal­ick 12 1 1 10 7 32 4

East

El Do East 12 9 3 0 44 6 30

Ari­ma North 12 8 3 1 39 4 27

St Au­gus­tine 12 8 1 3 37 10 25

San Juan North 12 4 3 5 31 14 15

Trin­i­ty East 12 3 3 6 22 20 12

To­co 12 1 4 7 10 36 7

Barataria South 12 0 1 11 6 99 1

South

Shi­va Boys' 12 8 2 2 35 10 26

Pre­sen­ta­tion 12 8 1 3 25 12 25

Na­pari­ma 12 7 1 4 22 16 22

Pleas­antville 12 6 3 3 23 11 21

P/Town West 12 3 3 6 9 16 12

St Bene­dict's 12 2 2 8 9 19 8

Ves­signy 12 2 0 10 12 51 6

Cen­tral

Cara­pichaima 10 9 1 0 44 5 28

Cou­va West 10 7 0 3 27 14 21

Gas­par­il­lo 10 6 2 2 20 8 20

Tabaquite 10 3 1 6 17 27 10

Pre­sen­ta­tion 10 3 0 7 14 21 9

Wa­ter­loo 10 0 0 10 3 50 0

To­ba­go

Scar­bor­ough 8 7 1 0 24 5 22

Sig­nal Hill 8 5 1 2 30 9 16

Ma­son Hall 8 4 0 4 14 21 12

Spey­side 8 3 0 5 14 21 9

Pen­te­costal 8 0 0 8 4 30 0