Five weeks in­to the 2012-2013 sea­son: an in­au­gur­al Dig­i­cel Char­i­ty Shield, the start of the Dig­i­cel Pro League Cham­pi­onship and a re­cent­ly con­clud­ed First Cit­i­zens Cup, the T&T Pro League is on track.

More so, the League is on tar­get in­sist­ed chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Dex­ter Skeene. "We are very pleased with the open­ing month of our ac­tiv­i­ties," said Skeene, a for­mer T&T in­ter­na­tion­al.

"At the be­gin­ning of the (sea­son) we had two strate­gic im­per­a­tives: one was to en­sure that we im­prove the at­ten­dance at League games, and sec­ond­ly to im­prove the game at­mos­phere. I am pleased to say that we have achieved these ob­jec­tives.

"If we look at the Fi­nal of the First Cit­i­zens Cup there were a cou­ple thou­sand peo­ple. And when we looked at the at­mos­phere, we got rave re­views from all of the dif­fer­ent me­dia. "So we are very hap­py with that. I think we are on tar­get and we are look­ing to roll out some more ini­tia­tives as we go along."

De­fend­ing League win­ners Di­recTV W Con­nec­tion snatched the first tro­phy of the sea­son-the Dig­i­cel Char­i­ty Shield-which was con­test­ed be­tween the League win­ners (Con­nec­tion) and the Dig­i­cel Pro Bowl win­ners, De­fence Force on Sep­tem­ber 7. W Con­nec­tion won the match 2-0.

And af­ter Match Day One of the League Cham­pi­onship, the Pro League made a turn for the First Cit­i­zens Cup which con­clud­ed on Oc­to­ber 5 at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um with de­fend­ing champs Cale­do­nia AIA de­feat­ing De­fence Force 2-1 to re­tain the ti­tle.

With smooth sail­ing in the open­ing month and some­what of an at­trac­tive turnout of spec­ta­tors, the League Cham­pi­onship con­tin­ues with Match Day Two this com­ing week­end fol­low­ing a two-week break which al­lowed the T&T se­nior team ac­cess to play­ers for the first round of the Caribbean Cup, in which the War­riors eas­i­ly topped Group 5 with wins over French Guiana (4-1), hosts St Kitts(1-0) and An­guil­la (10-0).

On Fri­day, the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um, Mara­bel­la, will come alive as new­com­ers Cen­tral FC take on Po­lice FC from 6 pm and sil­ver­ware-boast­ing Con­nec­tion and Cale­do­nia face off from 8 pm.

On Sat­ur­day the ac­tion moves to the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, with St Ann's Rangers against T&TEC from 5 pm, and De­fence Force against League lead­ers North East Stars at 7 pm.

Com­ment­ing fur­ther on the de­vel­op­ments of the League, Skeene added, "(This sea­son) We in­creased the brand ex­ten­sion by in­clud­ing the Dig­i­cel Char­i­ty Shield. So we are adding to the at­trac­tion of the League.

"We are al­so im­prov­ing in the mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tion of the games. We are now look­ing at dig­i­tal ad­ver­tis­ing where we are go­ing to be hit­ting PTSC and all of the tran­sits, phar­ma­cies and gas sta­tions.

"When we look at the Eng­lish Pre­mier­ship, they are front of mind in all of the peo­ple and that's what we are look­ing to do.

"We are look­ing to en­sure that wher­ev­er peo­ple go, they see T&T Pro League, Pro League play­ers, coach­es and Pro League foot­ball."

Skeene said that the League hopes to have young foot­ballers as house­hold names as it was in the past while cre­at­ing stars and try to link the foot­ball and en­sure that it be­comes an emo­tion­al top­ic again.

He said based on mar­ket sur­veys done at re­cent match­es, peo­ple are at­tract­ed by the en­ter­tain­ment pack­age.