So­ca War­riors mid­field­er Jo­evin Jones and re­cent Suri­namese sign­ing Dim­itrie Apai res­cued a point for Di­recTV W Con­nec­tion against Cen­tral FC in a 2-2 Dig­i­cel T&T Pro League draw at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va on Tues­day night.

Cen­tral FC, beat­en by the four-time Pro League cham­pi­on in the first round, looked well set to avenge that loss af­ter goals from for­mer W Con­nec­tion duo, Willis Plaza and Ja­son Mar­cano, in the 31st and 74th, hand­ed the "Sharks" a 2-0 lead.

How­ev­er, with three min­utes left in the match, ref­er­ee Michael Lon­don turned the match on its head with a soft penal­ty call against Cen­tral FC's Le­ston Paul on Jones, which the lat­ter con­vert­ed off the fin­gers of goal­keep­er Jan-Michael Williams be­fore Apai's equalis­er, three min­utes in­to time added on with a far post head­er from a Shah­don Win­ches­ter cross.

Ear­li­er on, Cen­tral FC which al­so went un­der to its op­po­nent in the T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion FA Tro­phy com­pe­ti­tion 6-5 on penal­ty-kicks af­ter a 2-2 draw, start­ed the brighter of both teams with Plaza forc­ing W Con­nec­tion goal­keep­er Ju­lani Archibald in­to a low save af­ter a poor clear­ance by de­fend­er Daneil Cyrus.

Cen­tral con­tin­ued its con­fi­dent start and in the 22nd minute came close again, with Dar­ren Mitchell hit­ting the cross-bar.

How­ev­er, his team's tac­tics were thwart­ed some­what when he was forced to re­place Ataullah Guer­ra due to a shoul­der in­jury from a col­li­sion with Jones, with his na­tion­al team-mate Run­dell Win­ches­ter.

The switch came as a bless­ing in dis­guise as with­in a blink of an eye, the speedy Win­ches­ter surged down the right flank and cen­tre for Plaza to tap home through the legs of Archibald for a de­served 1-0 lead in the 31st minute.

Four min­utes be­fore the half, Jones had his team's best ef­fort of the half but Williams was equal to the task to pre­serve his team's ad­van­tage while at the oth­er end of the field Archibald was al­so called in­to ac­tion to keep out an at­tempt from Samuel Delice off a Mitchell pass.

On the re­sump­tion, Cen­tral picked up where it left off with Win­ches­ter hav­ing two chances to ex­tend his team's lead, the first was blocked by Archibald while he hit the re­bound wide of the tar­get.

W Con­nec­tion, com­ing off its first league loss of the sea­son 2-1 away to Pt Fortin Civic, al­so cre­at­ed a few ner­vous mo­ments for the oth­er­wise steady Cen­tral de­fence with strik­er Hashim Ar­cia some­how turn­ing a cross from Jo­evin's broth­er, Alvin Jones on­to the bar in the 56th minute fol­lowed by Plaza's fir­ing wide and then Alvin again skew­ing his ef­fort.

Those missed ef­forts would come back to haunt W Con­nec­tion as Mar­cano slot­ted in his team's sec­ond in the 74th minute af­ter some neat build-up play be­tween, Win­ches­ter, Plaza and Paul.

But Cen­tral then played in­to the hands of W Con­nec­tion with de­fend­er Mekeil Williams show­ing the first signs of his team's come-back in­ten­tions by crash­ing a head­er off the cross­bar af­ter goal­keep­er Jan-Michael Williams blocked out his first ef­fort.

With five min­utes left, Cen­tral was still in con­trol and des­tined for max­i­mum points, that is un­til Lon­don's bizarre call for a penal­ty and then 19-year-old Apai's head­er to the de­light of his team-mates and dis­may of Cen­tral's play­ers and their irate coach, Eng­lish­man Ter­ry Fen­wick.

De­spite the two points dropped, W Con­nec­tion still leads with 33 points from 14 match­es, ten more than Pt Fortin Civic which was on a bye while Po­lice jumped to third with 21 points af­ter a 1-0 win over St Ann's Rangers in the open­er at Cou­va thanks to a 74th minute Jameel Per­ry strike from a Clevon Mc Phee cen­tre.

How­ev­er, Rangers had on­ly them­selves to blame for not pick­ing up a point at least af­ter Michael Yaw Darko blast­ed a penal­ty against the post, fol­low­ing ref­er­ee Den­nis Changiah pe­nal­is­ing de­fend­er Josi­mar Ash­ers for his pull on Josh Tou­s­saint in­side the area.

Up at the Mar­vin Lee Sta­di­um, Ma­coya, North East Stars wast­ed a chance to move in­to third spot af­ter it was held to a 0-0 draw by sec­ond from bot­tom San Juan Jabloteh.

To­mor­row's match­es

Venue: Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va:

St Ann's Rangers vs North East Stars, 6 pm

Jabloteh vs Cen­tral FC, 8 pm

Sat­ur­day:

Pt Fortin Civic vs Cale­do­nia AIA,

Ma­haica Oval, Pt Fortin, 3.30 pm

TUES­DAY'S RE­SULT

North East Stars 0 vs San Juan Jabloteh 0

Po­lice 1 (Jameel Per­ry 74th) vs St Ann's Rangers 0

Cen­tral FC 2 (Willis Plaza 31st, Ja­son Mar­cano 74th) vs W Con­nec­tion 2 (Jo­evin Jones 87th pen, Dim­itrie Apai 93rd)

STAND­INGS

Teams P W D L F A Pts

W Con­nec­tion 14 10 3 1 30 9 33

Pt Fortin 14 7 2 5 21 15 23

Po­lice 14 6 3 5 19 20 21

Cale­do­nia 13 5 5 3 21 14 20

N/East Stars 13 5 4 4 12 9 19

Cen­tral FC 13 3 8 2 16 14 17

De­fence Force 8 4 1 3 15 14 13

Jabloteh 14 3 2 9 18 30 11

Rangers 13 1 0 12 11 38 3?