Nigel Si­mon

T&T Pro League club Neal & Massy Cale­do­nia AIA will come up against host club George­Town of Cay­man Is­lands from 8.30 pm (9.30 pm T&T time) tonight need­ing a win to ce­ment a spot in the Caribbean Foot­ball Union Club Cham­pi­onship Fi­nal Round. This af­ter the Ja­maal Shabazz-coached club held two-time de­fend­ing CFU Club cham­pi­ons, Puer­to Ri­co Is­landers to a 0-0 draw in their Sec­ond Round Group Four open­er at the TE Mc Field Sports Cen­tre, George Town, Cay­man Is­lands on Mon­day night. The four-team group was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to kick off on Sun­day night with a dou­ble-head­er, how­ev­er Haiti's Bal­ti­more SC was a late with­draw­al from the com­pe­ti­tion which left the three clubs, Is­landers, Cale­do­nia and George Town to bat­tle for the two spots avail­able to the Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons League.

Cale­do­nia, which reached as far as the quar­ter­fi­nal round of the com­pe­ti­tion last year be­fore be­ing knocked out by an­oth­er Hait­ian club, Tem­pete 3-2 on penal­ty-kicks af­ter both teams won 1-0 at home en­tered the match on the heels of a 5-2 loss to De­fence Force in the Dig­i­cel Pro Bowl fi­nal at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo on Thurs­day night. How­ev­er, the Stephan David-cap­tained T&T club, which end­ed third in the T&T Pro League this sea­son while cap­tur­ing the First Cit­i­zens Cup, Lu­cozade Sport Goal Shield and T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion FA Tro­phy re­bound­ed with a de­ter­mined per­for­mance to move too with­in a win or draw of qual­i­fi­ca­tion.

T&T's Justin Fo­jo, Kevon Vil­laroel and Os­ei Teles­ford are at­tached to the Is­landers which is cur­rent­ly top of the North Amer­i­can Soc­cer League and was com­ing off a 1-1 draw with Car­oli­na Rail­Hawks on Sat­ur­day while the trio of Gre­go­ry Richard­son (Guyana), Jonathan Fana (Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic) and Nicholas Ad­dlery (Ja­maica) pre­vi­ous­ly played in the Pro League. A win to­day for Cale­do­nia which al­so com­pet­ed in the CFU Club Cham­pi­onship in 1998 will car­ry its points tal­ly to four and a cer­tain top two fin­ish ahead of Fri­day's fi­nal match in the group be­tween, George­Town and Is­landers, at the same venue from 8.30pm. At the end of the round-robin se­ries, the top two teams will join T&T Pro League cham­pi­ons and four-time CFU cham­pi­ons W Con­nec­tion (2001, 2002, 2006, 2009) and An­tigua Bar­racu­d­as in the Fi­nal Round to be held in T&T next month.

Fx­tures

To­day

Cale­do­nia AIA vs George Town vs Bal­ti­more, 8.30pm

Fri­day

Is­landers vs George Town, 8.30pm