Nigel Si­mon

T&TEC will be con­fi­dent of com­plet­ing a dream de­but sea­son in the Dig­i­cel Pro League when it goes af­ter a point in its fi­nal league match against Neal & Massy Cale­do­nia AIA from 8 pm at the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um, Mara­bel­la, to de­throne De­fence Force as league cham­pi­on. This af­ter the Dex­ter Cyrus-coached "Elec­tric­i­ty Boys" crushed Po­lice 6-1 in a re-sched­uled league match at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va on Tues­day night led by a hat-trick from Guyanese in­ter­na­tion­al Vur­lon Mills to go two points clear of for­mer cham­pi­on, W Con­nec­tion. The win pushed T&TEC to 39 points from 20 match­es while the on­ly oth­er ti­tle con­tender, W Con­nec­tion, which faces Po­lice at Cou­va, al­so from 8 pm tonight, has 37 points.

The match­es were orig­i­nal­ly card­ed for to­mor­row but be­cause of the pub­lic hol­i­day (Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist Lib­er­a­tion Day), they were brought for­ward. Go­ing in­to the fi­nal round of match­es, the task for T&TEC though, is sim­ple, well atleast on pa­per. A win for T&TEC which has split it two pre­vi­ous league match­es with Cale­do­nia will see it make a his­toric leap from bmo­bile Na­tion­al Su­per League dou­ble-crown cham­pi­ons in one year to Pro League kings the next. Cyrus' men could still be crown cham­pi­ons should their en­counter with Cale­do­nia end in a draw and W Con­nec­tion de­feats Po­lice to draw lev­el on 40 ponts as it en­joys a plus-18 goal-dif­fer­ence to W Con­nec­tion's plus-five.

But should T&TEC suf­fer a loss, it will leave the door open for W Con­nec­tion which last lift­ed the league ti­tle in 2005, to end its drought with vic­to­ry over Po­lice, with whom it has split its league re­sults so far this sea­son.

Speak­ing on the eve of his team's en­counter with Cale­do­nia, Cyrus said his team was very op­ti­mistic about get­ting the job done but at the same time, he lament­ed the fact that they would be play­ing a sec­ond match in three days. He said, "I'm very dis­ap­point­ed with the league for hav­ing played Tues­day and then again on Thurs­day. It's a ridicu­lous dis­ad­van­tage as both our team and Po­lice will be tired and now they will be play­ing a rest­ed W Con­nec­tion squad." With the ti­tle with­in reach for his club, Cyrus not­ed that his play­ers had put too much in­to the cam­paign now for the ad­min­is­tra­tors to make those kinds of de­ci­sions.

"The guys are all up for the match against Cale­do­nia but the league has put us in a sit­u­a­tion where we are play­ing three match­es in six days. Any hopes of third placed Cale­do­nia (35 points) which was elim­i­nat­ed from the ti­tle race with T&TEC's win over Po­lice giv­ing their op­po­nents and easy ride tonight was brushed aside by its man­ag­er Ja­mal Shabazz who said his team has its eyes set on sec­ond spot. "Cred­it must be giv­en to T&TEC for the ef­forts it has put out in its first sea­son in the Pro League but they will have to play their hearts out against us. "We are go­ing af­ter sec­ond spot on the ta­ble and to have any chance of achiev­ing our goal is to win our match."

Cur­rent stand­ings:

Teams P W D L F A Pts

T&TEC 20 11 6 3 34 16 39

W Con­nec­tion 20 12 1 7 24 19 37

Cale­do­nia 20 11 2 7 31 26 35

De­fence Force 20 8 5 7 29 28 29

Jabloteh 20 7 6 7 29 27 27

Po­lice 20 5 6 9 29 39 21

NE Stars 20 4 5 11 19 27 17

Rangers 20 4 5 11 24 37 17