Nicholas Grant and Evan Far­rell were both on tar­get as Petrotrin edged De­fence Force 2-1 in thi­er top-of-the-ta­ble T&T Hock­ey Board Men's Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion en­counter at the Na­tion­al Hock­ey Cen­tre, Tacarigua on Sat­ur­day for a three point lead.

Both clubs en­tered the match lev­el on 12 points from four match­es, the same as reign­ing "Big-Four" cham­pi­ons, Paragon who won on Sat­ur­day.

Af­ter an even­ly-matched open­ing pe­ri­od na­tion­al play­er Grant fired the Oil­men ahead in the 26th minute which his team took in­to the in­ter­val. Far­rell made it 2-0, eight min­utes in­to the sec­ond-half, on­ly for for­mer na­tion­al cap­tain, Nicholas Wren to cut the lead in half, three min­utes lat­er.

In the end, the Oil­men, the league cham­pi­ons for the past three sea­sons man­aged to hold on­to the nar­row lead for their fifth win from as many out­ings and 15 points, three more than De­fence Force and Paragon, which has a match in hand.

Notre Dame al­so main­tained a 100 per cent win­ning record in the Women's Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion, with a come-from-be­hind 3-1 whip­ping of pre­vi­ous­ly un­beat­en Har­vard Mar­itime Check­ers led by a dou­ble from pro­lif­ic na­tion­al women's team for­ward Blair Wynne.

Check­ers, win­ners, of their pre­vi­ous two match­es, 2-0 and 3-1 over Malvern and Par­adise re­spec­tive­ly, looked on course for a third win of the sea­son when Fiona Le Blanc net­ted the open­er in the 28th minute which they took in­to the break.

Three min­utes af­ter the restart, Wynne got her first to get the Dames even and then fired in the go-ahead item two min­utes lat­er while Tamia Roach added an in­sur­ance item on the stroke of full-time.

The win for the Dames, which fol­lows pre­vi­ous vic­to­ries against Ven­tures (9-0) and Malvern (6-3) car­ry their points tal­ly to max­i­mum nine, three ahead of Check­ers while Paragon and Par­adise are next with four points each.

Long-time ri­vals, Shandy Carib Mag­no­lias and Malvern, both have three points from two and four match­es re­spec­tive­ly, while Ven­tures is win­less.

T&T HB re­sults

Sun­day's re­sults

Men's Cham­pi­onship:

Petrotrin 2 (Nicholas Grant 26th, Evan Far­rell 43rd) vs De­fence Force 1 (Nicholas Wren 46th)

Women's Cham­pi­onship:

Notre Dame 3 (Blair Wynne 38th, 40th, Tamia Roach 70th) vs HM Check­ers 1 (Fiona Le Blanc 28th)

Un­der-19 Girls:

Malvern 2 (Mia Mitchell 13th, Khaili­cia Alexan­der 35th) vs HM Check­ers 0