An­drew Gioan­net­ti

The Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC) won the T&T Rug­by Foot­ball Union (TTR­FU) Un­der-19 di­vi­sion ti­tle, when Caribs de­feat­ed Har­vard 10-5 at the Caribs Old Ground, Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, on Sun­day.YTC's ti­tle win comes af­ter a four-year drought. They last won the Un­der-21 in 2008 and 2007, and pre­vi­ous­ly took sil­ver­ware play­ing in the se­nior di­vi­sion with an un­der-21 team in 2004.Har­vard fin­ished the sea­son lev­el with YTC, as Har­vard was award­ed a bonus point for los­ing by less than sev­en points in Sun­day's fix­ture.Al Hakiy­mu Stew­art and Jerome Richard­son scored for the Beer Boys while Cory Phillip got the lone try for the Ser­pen­tine Road based Har­vard Club.

De­spite ide­al con­di­tions, both teams dis­played un­con­vinc­ing per­for­mances at times dur­ing the match. Har­vard, es­pe­cial­ly will rue sev­er­al knock-for­wards in their op­po­nents half, which saw po­ten­tial at­tacks break down.Both teams de­fend­ed well and the tack­les were tough. Sev­er­al play­ers stayed down in­jured dur­ing the match, while Har­vard's Nicholas King had to re­ceive treat­ment for a split lip.Caribs opened, look­ing stronger and fit­ter. They found the open­er from Stew­ard, mid-way through the first half. Com­ing down to half-time, Har­vard did find their break­through with a lev­el­er scored by Phillip.They, how­ev­er, missed the chance to go on top, when Shaquille Lu­cas missed the con­ver­sion at­tempt.

Both teams left the field at half time know­ing that the per­for­mances could im­prove.Caribs re­turned in the sec­ond half, and sur­prised Har­vard al­most im­me­di­ate­ly when Jerome Richard­son touched be­yond the try line, to go 10-5 up. Caribs re­mained in con­trol for large por­tions of the match.De­spite the cel­e­bra­tions by the Caribs play­ers, the team re­mained in third, while YTC and Har­vard al­so held their places in sec­ond and third.Rain­bow fin­ished in fourth place, while Roy­alians, had a sea­son to for­get, on­ly tak­ing one point, which came from los­ing by un­der sev­en points.

YTC fin­ished the sea­son, with a de­fault win over Rain­bow. In their match pri­or, they lost to Caribs 26-12, but man­aged a 17-11 win against the same op­po­nents back in Au­gust.The YTC will see changes to their squad for the fol­low­ing sea­son, as the play­ers will be reshuf­fled. Na­tion­al stand­out Olton Charles, will be leav­ing the in­sti­tu­tion and will be un­avail­able for the up­com­ing sea­son. Charles im­pressed this sea­son, lead­ing his team to the ti­tle, along with Bran­don Scot­land, Shaquille Dray­ton, Melville East­man and sev­er­al oth­ers.

Re­sults

Team P W D L B F A Pts

YTC 8 5 1 2 5 171 72 27

Har­vard 8 5 1 2 5 152 107 27

Caribs 8 5 0 3 5 150 83 25

Rain­bow 8 4 0 4 5 149 165 21

Roy­alians 8 0 0 8 1 58 253 1