Last year's third-place fin­ish­er in Tier I of the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League (TTPFL), Mis­cel­la­neous Po­lice, got a per­fect start to its sea­son on Fri­day (Oc­to­ber 24) night when it thrashed San Juan Jabloteh 4-0 at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in Ba­co­let, To­ba­go.

This was in the first match of a dou­ble­head­er; how­ev­er, flight trou­bles pre­vent­ed the sec­ond match be­tween Ter­minex La Hor­quet­ta Rangers and FC Phoenix from be­ing played. One team mem­ber con­tact­ed Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day af­ter­noon to say they had been wait­ing at the air­port for hours for a flight that nev­er came.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the teams for the open­ing match (Po­lice and Jabloteh) ar­rived mere mo­ments be­fore kick-off. But it did not af­fect the San Juan men, who set­tled quick­ly in the con­test and had the Law­men re­treat­ing from the start. Po­lice, who got the bet­ter of Jabloteh last sea­son for one of two spots for the Con­ca­caf Caribbean Shield, got in­to stride soon af­ter and dom­i­nat­ed the pro­ceed­ings with strik­er Kwe­si Allen (4th, 35th) fir­ing in two goals to spear­head the win.

Ris­ing goal-scor­ing tal­ent from the sis­ter-isle, Mick­aeel ‘Jem’ Gor­don added a third goal in the 43rd for the Law­men, while for­mer na­tion­al mid­field­er Jo­evin Jones sealed the vic­to­ry with his goal in the 69th.

Po­lice coach Todd Ryan, who took over from Wen­dell Joseph sev­er­al months ago, told Guardian Me­dia Sports they aim to win the league and earn au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the Con­ca­caf Caribbean Cup tour­na­ment.

Ryan, speak­ing about his team’s open­ing match, said, “The per­for­mance was ex­cel­lent to­day, giv­en the de­lay in the flight and the late ar­rival of the teams for the match. Jabloteh set­tled quick­ly in the match, but once my team set­tled, they dom­i­nat­ed the match, so I think the re­sult was well de­served.

“We cre­at­ed a lot of chances, and on an­oth­er day the score could have eas­i­ly been 6-0. We need to work on our fit­ness and our goal-scor­ing, but on Fri­day, we could not fault the boys. They worked hard and they got the re­sult we need­ed. Go­ing for­ward, we want to play at a very high lev­el of in­ten­si­ty. Last sea­son we qual­i­fied for the Con­ca­caf Caribbean Shield, but this time we want to go one fur­ther and qual­i­fy for the Cup, and prob­a­bly win it.”

Fri­day’s post­poned match was fol­lowed by a re­lease from the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, which sought to ex­plain the cir­cum­stances.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, “The T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball Leagues wish­es to ad­vise that due to an un­ex­pect­ed re­stric­tion on air­space op­er­a­tions, there were sig­nif­i­cant de­lays to

flights, im­pact­ing team trav­el sched­ules and lo­gis­ti­cal arrange­ments for our clubs to­day. This re­sult­ed in the can­cel­la­tion of the FC Phoenix and the Ter­minex La Hor­quet­ta Rangers match, which was sched­uled to be played at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um on Fri­day night.

“This sit­u­a­tion was en­tire­ly be­yond our con­trol and was clas­si­fied as a case of force ma­jeure in the TTPFL T1 Reg­u­la­tions 2025/2026 and could not have been rea­son­ably an­tic­i­pat­ed or avoid­ed.

"Nev­er­the­less, the pa­tience, pro­fes­sion­al­ism, and col­lec­tive com­mit­ment en­sured that the League’s open­ing fix­ture be­tween San Juan Jabloteh and Mis­cel­la­neous Po­lice could be played as planned. The con­duct of the re­spec­tive clubs un­der such cir­cum­stances re­flect­ed, not on­ly the re­silience of the re­spec­tive or­gan­i­sa­tions but al­so the uni­ty and shared pur­pose that con­tin­ue to strength­en our foot­ball ecosys­tem.”

On Sat­ur­day, the ac­tion was sched­uled to con­tin­ue with Prison Ser­vices ver­sus Cale­do­nia AIA, and MIC Cen­tral FC Re­boot and Point Fortin Civic at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va.

Re­sults

Mis­cel­la­neous Po­lice 4 (Kwe­si Allen 4th, 35th, Mick­aeel ‘Jem’ Gor­don 43rd, Jo­evin Jones 69th) vs San Juan Jabloteh 0.

Sun­day’s match­es (At Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um)

FC Ea­gles vs Club San­do, 5 pm

De­fence Force vs AC PoS, 7 pm