Hav­ing boot­ed de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Di­recTV North East Stars from the Lu­cozade Sports Goal Shield com­pe­ti­tion via a 4-3 penal­ty-kicks win, af­ter a 1-1 quar­ter­fi­nal draw, T&TEC has now set its sights on set­tling a score with Neal & Massy Cale­do­nia AIA. "Our guys have a score to set­tle against Cale­do­nia," said T&TEC­coach Dex­ter Cyrus ahead of to­mor­row's (Fri­day) semi­fi­nal at the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um, Mara­bel­la from 8pm. In the first semi­fi­nal, at the same venue, De­fence Force faces St Ann's Rangers from 6pm. Cale­do­nia which edged Po­lice 1-0 in its quar­ter­fi­nal, is in the hunt for its third piece of sil­ver­ware this sea­son af­ter cop­ing the First Cit­i­zens Cup (de­feat­ing T&TEC in the fi­nal) and the FA Tro­phy (de­feat­ing De­fence Force in the fi­nal).

The Mor­vant/Laven­tille-based club al­so had a key role in deny­ing T&TEC the league crown on the fi­nal day of the sea­son. T&TEC, (39 points) fell to a 2-3 de­feat against Cale­do­nia in its fi­nal match three weeks ago af­ter need­ing just a point to lift the ti­tle. The slip in the end by T&TEC saw W Con­nec­tion which de­feat­ed Po­lice 8-1 in its match lift the League ti­tle with 40 points. Look­ing ahead of the semi­fi­nal, T&TEC coach Dex­ter Cyrus said, "I like these types of match­es." "If we were fresh (against Cale­do­nia) we would have won the League. We now have suf­fi­cient time to pre­pare for them," added the T&TEC coach who main­tained that the League fix­tures which saw his side play two match­es in three days was to blame for his side fail­ure to lift the ti­tle. "We are re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to Fri­day's game (against Cale­do­nia). We have been very con­sis­tent this sea­son. We were ac­tu­al­ly the most con­sis­tent team fin­ish­ing sec­ond in the League, First Cit­i­zens Cup and Toy­ota Clas­sic. We are in a po­si­tion now to win on Fri­day and reach an­oth­er fi­nal and go on to ac­tu­al­ly win sil­ver­ware," he said.

The T&TEC coach went on to ex­plain that while Cale­do­nia has a very at­tack, the Mor­vant/Laven­tille side's de­fense is very ex­ploitable. Com­ment­ing on his team's 4-3 penal­ty win over North East Stars, Cyrus said it didn't mat­ter how the much need­ed vic­to­ry came. "An­oth­er loss (com­ing off our fi­nal League match de­feat against Cale­do­nia) would have re­al­ly hurt the play­ers and the club. Just the mere fact that we bounced back was more im­por­tant than any­thing. The play­ers were down a bit and we had to shake off that rust. Now that we have got­ten it out of the way, we are ac­tu­al­ly in a bet­ter po­si­tion to win on Fri­day and I am very con­fi­dent that we can get the win. Stars played a good game. I thought they have a re­al­ly calm foot­ball about them com­ing from the back with (Charles) Pol­lard and (Seon) Pow­er part­ner­ing ea­chother in de­fense. But they weren't re­al­ly a prob­lem against our goal al­though equal­iz­ing. It's just that we have the prob­lem of muff­ing at ear­ly chances," he end­ed.

Lu­cozade Sport Goal Shield semi­fi­nals.

To­mor­row (Fri­day):

Venue: Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um, Mara­bel­la

De­fence Force vs Rangers, 6pm

T&TEC vs Cale­do­nia, 8pm