Stu­art Charles-Fevri­er and An­gus Eve, the head coach­es of Dig­i­cel Pro Bowl semi­fi­nal­ist Di­recTV W Con­nec­tion and North East, re­spec­tive­ly, have each ex­pressed op­ti­mism about their own team's chances of go­ing all the way to the ti­tle on Wednes­day May 29 at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo.

How­ev­er, pri­or to get­ting to the $100,000 win­ner-take-all fi­nal which will be in­creased by a per­cent­age of the gate re­ceipts, both W Con­nec­tion, pre­vi­ous win­ners in 2004 and 2007 with Charles-Fevri­er at the helm, and Stars, will have to get past tough op­po­nents in ti­tle-hold­er De­fence Force and debu­tants Cen­tral FC, re­spec­tive­ly, in the semi­fi­nals at the Mar­vin Lee Sta­di­um, Ma­coya, to­mor­row.

Last Fri­day in the sec­ond match of a quar­ter­fi­nal dou­ble-head­er at Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va, W Con­nec­tion, al­so run­ner-up in 2005, 2006 and 2011, whipped last year's beat­en fi­nal­ist and 2008 win­ner Neal & Massy Cale­do­nia AIA 3-1.

For the "Savonet­ta Boys," An­drei Pacheco scored a ninth-minute penal­ty while Neil Ben­jamin made it 2-0 four min­utes in­to the sec­ond half be­fore Aubrey David pulled a goal back for Cale­do­nia, on­ly for Hashim Ar­cia to seal his team's last-four spot with a 79th minute strike.

Re­flect­ing on the win, the St Lu­cian-born Charles-Fevri­er, who has been at the helm of the team for each of its top two fin­ish­es in the tour­na­ment, said the win was ex­pect­ed as the team has been play­ing very well in re­cent times.

He added, "Over the past two months, we have been more con­sis­tent as a unit and this has trans­formed in­to a bet­ter team spir­it among the play­ers and in­to our re­sults as well."

Look­ing ahead to the semi­fi­nal show­down with De­fence Force, Charles-Fevri­er, who guid­ed his team to the re­cent Lu­cozade Sport Goal Shield ti­tle as well as qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the main draw of the Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons League said his team will be up for the chal­lenge against the reign­ing Pro Bowl cham­pi­ons.

"It's a semi­fi­nal and we know which ever team we come up against it's nev­er go­ing to be easy. Added to the fact that, we will be fac­ing the Dig­i­cel Pro League cham­pi­ons De­fence Force who we beat 4-0 in a re­cent en­counter in the league on May 6.

"They (De­fence Force) will no doubt be keen to avenge that de­feat, but at the same time we are al­so con­fi­dent that we have the qual­i­ty in our squad to go all the way to the ti­tle."

In its quar­ter­fi­nal at Mu­cu­rapo, De­fence Force was a com­fort­able 5-0 win­ner over T&TEC in its quar­ter­fi­nal at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, with na­tion­al winger Kevon Carter scor­ing a hat-trick (68th, 70th, 83rd) and Rodell El­cock (63rd) and Ross Rus­sell Jr (78th) adding the oth­ers.

Stars al­so en­joyed a rel­a­tive­ly easy pas­sage to the semi­fi­nal round via a 3-0 shutout of St Ann's Rangers in the sec­ond match at Mu­cu­rapo with Kennedy Hink­son, Mar­cus Gomez and Ka­reem Moses the scor­ers against St Ann's Rangers as it hunts its first lien on the Pro Bowl.

Fol­low­ing the win, Stars coach An­gus Eve, a past Pro Bowl win­ner in 2005 and 2006 as an as­sis­tant coach to Ter­ry Fen­wick at San Juan Jabloteh, said he was very pleased with the pro­fes­sion­al per­for­mance and was keen­ly look­ing to­wards the semi­fi­nal meet­ing with Fen­wick's Cen­tral FC in to­mor­row's first semi­fi­nal from 6 pm.

"Our aim go­ing in­to the match was to get the re­quired re­sult to get to the semi­fi­nal stage of the com­pe­ti­tion and we were able to achieve that and al­so main­tain our good de­fen­sive record by not con­ced­ing a goal," stat­ed Eve.

"We are now fo­cus­ing on Cen­tral FC and hav­ing played them four times al­ready this sea­son we know we can ex­pect an­oth­er tough, close­ly-fought con­test."

He not­ed that when you hear peo­ple say that Cen­tral FC is a new team in the league it's a kind of mis­lead­ing fact, be­cause most of the play­ers on their ros­ter have the ex­pe­ri­ence of play­ing in the Pro League be­fore.

"In our meet­ings so far, they have been very com­pet­i­tive in each match and we ex­pect noth­ing less from them come Fri­day as both teams will be play­ing for a spot in the win­ner-take-all $100,000 fi­nal."

Cen­tral FC, cred­itable fifth-placed fin­ish­ers in the league in its de­but sea­son, got a 61st-minute strike from An­tigua and Bar­bu­da for­ward Pe­ter By­ers to beat Po­lice 1-0 in their quar­ter­fi­nal at Cou­va.

In ad­di­tion to the win­ner's prize there are in­di­vid­ual awards for "Top Scor­er," "Most Valu­able Play­er" and "Most Out­stand­ing Coach" of $2,000, $2,000 and $3,000, re­spec­tive­ly.

To­mor­row's semi­fi­nals

Venue: Mar­vin Lee Sta­di­um, Ma­coya

North East Stars vs Cen­tral FC, 6 pm

De­fence Force vs W Con­nec­tion, 8 pm

Fi­nal: May 29

Venue: Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, 8 pm

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