Ross Rus­sell, coach of De­fence Force, com­mend­ed his play­ers for their ef­fort de­spite the Lu­cozade Sport Goal Shield fi­nal to Neal & Massy Cale­do­nia AIA 3-1 at Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo on Fri­day night. The loss was the sec­ond in a fi­nal for the "Teteron Boys" against Cale­do­nia, af­ter a 1-0 de­feat in the T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion FA Tro­phy fi­nal last month at the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um, Mara­bel­la. Speak­ing af­ter Fri­day's loss, a de­ject­ed Rus­sell said, "I think my team gave a gut­sy per­for­mance." "I think it was none of the play­ers faults [that we suf­fered de­feat]," added Rus­sell who be­lieved that the of­fi­ci­at­ing was against his side. Ear­li­er on in the tour­na­ment, the un­der­strength De­fence Force squad had reg­is­tered com­pre­hen­sive wins over Adam's Con­struc­tion San Juan Jabloteh and St Ann's Rangers, both by 4-1 mar­gins in the quar­ter­fi­nal and semi­fi­nal rounds, re­spec­tive­ly.

This was achieved with­out reg­u­lars Kevon Carter, Sean Nar­cis, An­ton Joseph, Ke­ston Williams, Dex­ter Pacheco, Ronald St Louis, Rawle Fletch­er and Ster­ling O'Brien, who are all on a three-month pro­mo­tion­al course in the T&T Reg­i­ment, while reg­u­lar team cap­tain Corey Rivers missed the tour­na­ment with a groin in­jury. In the fi­nal, De­fence Force con­ced­ed an ear­ly goal from the penal­ty spot by Cale­do­nia wing­back Ka­reem Joseph af­ter ref­er­ee Michael Ra­goonath point­ed to the spot in the sec­ond minute when De­vorn Jorsling went down against a chal­lenge by goal­keep­er Kevin Gra­ham, who ar­gued that he won the ball off the Cale­do­nia play­er. De­fence Force pulled the scores lev­el five min­utes be­fore the break through strik­er Richard Roy, how­ev­er con­ced­ed goals in the 48th and 50th min­utes from Ja­mal Gay and Wal­ter Moore, re­spec­tive­ly. "We had two blun­ders in the sec­ond-half," ad­mit­ted Rus­sell. "But we will try to do bet­ter the next time." For­ward Roy picked up the top scor­er award with four goals in the tour­na­ment while Cale­do­nia mid­field­er Stephan David was vot­ed the "Most Valu­able Play­er" of the fi­nal.