Ja­maal Shabazz, tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of T&T Pro League club Neal & Massy Cale­do­nia AIA has de­scribed his team's qual­i­fi­ca­tion for a sec­ond straight Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons League as a big mo­ment for the Mor­vant/Laven­tille com­mu­ni­ty.On Wednes­day at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va, Cale­do­nia, the reign­ing Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) Club Cham­pi­onship ti­tle-hold­er bat­tled to a 2-2 draw with Ja­maica's Port­more Unit­ed in their third-place play­off to ad­vance 3-2 on ag­gre­gate af­ter a 1-0 win in the first-leg at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo on Mon­day.Cale­do­nia, which made its de­but in the Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons League last year and end­ed bot­tom of its three-team Group Four se­ries which in­clud­ed US Ma­jor League Soc­cer's Seat­tle Sounders and Hon­duran club CD Marathon with one point, now joins fel­low T&T club Di­recTV W Con­nec­tion and Haiti's Va­len­cia in the main draw for the group stages June 3.

Com­ment­ing on the team's progress, Shabazz said, "I think it's a big mo­ment for the com­mu­ni­ty of Mor­vant/Laven­tille and T&T be­cause we get to show­case on a big­ger stage against North Amer­i­can and Cen­tral Amer­i­can teams."I think it's an im­por­tant mo­ment for us to get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pre­pare for high­er lev­el op­po­nents, even as ad­min­is­tra­tors and tech­ni­cal peo­ple to move that step up."The fact that W Con­nec­tion and Cale­do­nia qual­i­fied, it shows some lev­el of con­sis­ten­cy, not just by these two teams, but by the T&T Pro League. There is a lot of crit­i­cism to the league but there must be some­thing that we are do­ing right to come out of the Caribbean, two sea­sons con­sec­u­tive­ly."With re­gards to his team's sec­ond-half melt­down, Shabazz be­lieved it was all down to tired legs at the end of a long sea­son."I think guys want­i­ng to fin­ish the match be­fore it's done forced us to go to the bench and a lot of scary mo­ments in the dy­ing stages of the game. But this will al­ways be when you have tired legs com­ing from a long sea­son and I think it took its toll on us to­day (Wednes­day).

"But if we had scored our chances ear­li­er in the game, we may have made it a lot eas­i­er."But still we had some hard work. Peo­ple like Ja­mal Gay show­ing good work eth­ic and qual­i­ty, and al­so Den­sill Theobald. So all in all, while at times it was scary, I thought we had enough chances to win the game com­fort­ably."Shabazz was al­so full of praise for op­po­nents Port­more who he said showed that Ja­maican foot­ball has evolved."Twen­ty years ago, Ja­maica was kick and look, and just ag­gres­sion. Now you can see them putting pass­es to­geth­er. I think if this was a team play­ing in the Pro League, as coach Jer­ry Moe said, they would be one, two, three or four."So it's a good qual­i­ty team. They kept the ball well, they have good strength and good fit­ness and I think it was nev­er go­ing to be an easy task for us al­though we were play­ing the two games at home."

Asked why both legs of the play­off were played in T&T, Shabazz, a for­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er, said it was Port­more's de­ci­sion to re­duce costs."Port­more made the of­fer, so that we had to pay the ac­com­mo­da­tion, meals and in­ter­nal trans­port. It cost us cheap­er but it al­so cost them cheap­er as well. So it was a win-win sit­u­a­tion for the both groups. But we still have the bills to pay, so we are hop­ing that spon­sors will come for­ward. "We may have to go and wash the dish­es in Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel to pay the bills, but gen­er­al­ly we were hap­py that it was done like that. I think we treat­ed Port­more well. Al­though we were very com­bat­ive on the field of play, we de­vel­oped a good re­la­tion­ship, so much, that a cou­ple of their play­ers have shown in­ter­est in com­ing over to play with us."Qual­i­fy­ing for the Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons League capped off an­oth­er im­pres­sive cam­paign for Cale­do­nia as it re­cent­ly end­ed sec­ond in the Dig­i­cel T&T Pro League, while re­tain­ing hold of the First Cit­i­zens Cup and T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion FA Tro­phy.