An­drew Gioan­net­ti

Four-time cham­pi­ons, W Con­nec­tion made the per­fect start to its Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) Club Cham­pi­onship 2012 cam­paign with a com­fort­able 2-0 tri­umph over Haiti's Vic­to­ry SC, on Sun­day night.

The win put W Con­nec­tion on three points, but be­hind Amer­i­can-based USL Pro team An­tigua Bar­racu­da FC, on goal-dif­fer­en­cial af­ter the team de­feat­ed Suri­namese In­ter Mo­en­goetapoe 3-0, in the sec­ond match of the Group Five dou­ble head­er, at the Man­ny Ramjohn Sta­di­um, Mara­bel­la. The open­ing match be­tween Group Five host team W Con­nec­tion and Vic­to­ry was unin­spired at times, de­spite the lo­cal boys ev­i­dent­ly the stronger of the two. The "Savonet­ta Boys", af­ter sev­er­al failed at­tempts in the fi­nal third, even­tu­al­ly pro­gressed, and one of­ten won­dered how the team did not win the match by a much wider mar­gin. W Con­nec­tion was not nec­es­sar­i­ly com­pre­hen­sive, as the team ap­peared too ca­su­al some­times, but de­fend­ers al­ways had a win cov­ered once it found the lead.

Na­tion­al at­tack­er Shah­don Win­ches­ter was per­haps the most live­ly and in­volved play­er on the pitch for Con­nec­tion, but he too had many a fi­nal pass which went beg­ging. Both teams took some time to set­tle af­ter the kick off, but on­ly 15 min­utes passed be­fore W Con­nec­tion took the lead through Hashim Ar­cia, who burst through on the right flank af­ter be­ing di­rect­ed by a su­perb pass by Ren­nie Brit­to. Af­ter out­pac­ing the op­po­si­tion's back­line, Ar­cia found him­self alone with Vic­to­ry keep­er Ronald Elus­ma, and ham­mered a shot eas­i­ly past the cus­to­di­an in the most clin­i­cal fash­ion. From the open­er, W Con­nec­tion seemed to find sat­is­fac­tion in at­tempt­ing cross-field pass­ing, which more of­ten than not, ei­ther went out of play, or found a Vic­to­ry de­fend­er. Con­nec­tion stop­per Williams bare­ly had sight of the ball in the first half, but was test­ed in the 44th minute, when a live­ly Phillipe Ju­nior Tou­s­saint struck a promis­ing ef­fort which stung his palms. The match promised a bet­ter sec­ond half, and it was.

The Stu­art Chales Fevri­er coached W Con­nec­tion team, which made a change, tak­ing out Leslie Rus­sell for Akeem Ben­jamin at the half, looked more in­spired. The back four for W Con­nec­tion was re­in­forced, and the at­tack­ers, name­ly Win­ches­ter, Jo­evin Jones and Brit­to (Ren­nie) col­lab­o­rat­ed for some promis­ing moves, which un­for­tu­nate­ly nev­er ma­te­ri­alised be­cause of slack pass­ing in the end. Con­nec­tion soaked up pres­sure from the Haitians, al­low­ing its at­tack­ers Gas­pard Jean Bap­tiste and Bony Pierre sev­er­al runs at the de­fend­ers. Those too, nev­er re­al­ly trou­bled the Con­nec­tion de­fend­ers, as the Haitians were even­tu­al­ly lim­it­ed to am­bi­tious shot from way out, which nev­er trou­bled Williams.

Pos­ses­sion was con­tin­u­ous­ly in ex­change. How­ev­er, much to the de­light of the sup­port, in the 77th minute, Brit­to, who was of­ten ne­glect­ed on the right hand side, as his team-mates failed to pick up his runs, was sent through to find Ar­cia, who made no mis­take from close range, wrap­ping up a de­served win for the hosts.

Fi­nal­ly, a string off pass­es, would re­sult in a promis­ing end prod­uct. On­ly three min­utes had passed since the goal, when Con­nec­tion could have been three goals up, if not for the save of the match from Elus­ma, whose su­perb right div­ing par­ry, de­nied an ex­cel­lent vol­ley from Win­ches­ter. Fol­low­ing the win, Con­nec­tion would have on­ly 48 hours rest be­fore meet­ing Suri­namese team In­ter Mo­en­go­tapoe, at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va. The match is sched­uled to kick off at 7.30 pm. Bar­racu­da and Vic­to­ry will play in the first match from 5.30 pm. Then, on Thurs­day, in the fi­nal round of Group Five match­es, W Con­nec­tion will take on An­tigua Bar­racu­da at the Man­ny Ramjohn Sta­di­um, Mara­bel­la, at 7.30 pm.

Re­sults

Sun­day

Group Five

W Con­nec­tion 2 (Hashim Ar­cia 16th, 77th) v Vic­to­ry (Haiti) 0

An­tigua Bar­racu­da 3 (Ta­mor­ley Thomas 9th, 89th, Quin­ton Grif­fith 43rd) v In­ter Mo­en­goetapoe (Sur) 0

Fix­tures

Tues­day

Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va

Vic­to­ry v An­tigua Bar­racu­da, 5.30 pm

W Con­nec­tion v In­ter Mo­en­go­tapoe, 7.30 pm

Thurs­day

Man­ny Ramjohn Sta­di­um, Mara­bel­la

Vic­to­ry v In­ter Mo­en­go­tapoe, 5.30 pm

W Con­nec­tion v An­tigua Bar­racu­da, 7.30 pm