Jan­u­ary trans­fer win­dow sign­ings Jo­evin Jones and Nicholas Dil­lon both scored hat-tricks to lead de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons. De­fence Force Elite to an em­phat­ic 9-0 ham­mer­ing of Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers in the sec­ond match of a dou­ble-head­er at Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va on Sun­day (Jan­u­ary 25) night.

With the win, De­fence Force stretched their un­beat­en do­mes­tic run, which dates back to the 2024 sea­son, af­ter a 4-3 loss to Point Fortin Civic on March 16, to 40-plus match­es.

The De­vorn Jorsling-coached De­fence Force now leads the 12-club stand­ings with 36 points from 14 match­es, three more than main chal­lengers Club San­do FC, who edged Mis­cel­la­neous Po­lice FC 1-0 in the first match at Cou­va on Sun­day.

The 34-year-old Jones, for­mer­ly of Po­lice FC and Cen­tral FC in re­cent times, opened the scor­ing for De­fence Force in the 12th minute in his first start in three out­ings for his new em­ploy­ers be­fore Ja­mali Gar­cia made it 2-0 four min­utes lat­er, with Ri­val­do Cory­at adding a third in the 22nd.

De­spite the ear­ly on­slaught from De­fence Force, Rangers man­aged to stem the flow of goals to trail 3-0 at the half-time in­ter­val.

How­ev­er, in the sec­ond half, De­fence Force, who are gear­ing up to host US Ma­jor League Soc­cer’s Philadel­phia Union in the first leg of the Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons Cup round-of-32 qual­i­fiers on Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 18 (Ash Wednes­day), came out in the sec­ond half on a mis­sion with dis­card­ed T&T strik­er Dil­lon, who had pro­fes­sion­al stints in Bel­gium and Sau­di Ara­bia, get­ting on the score sheet in the 47th minute, be­fore Jones got his sec­ond of the match in the 49th minute for a 5-0 ad­van­tage.

It was now just a mat­ter of how many more goals De­fence Force would add to their tal­ly, and in the 57th minute, reign­ing T&T ‘Play­er of the Year” Kevin Moli­no added his name to the score­card which was quick­ly fol­lowed by Jones’ third to com­plete his hat-trick in the 61st minute, which pushed the lead to 7-0.

Dil­lon then got two fur­ther strikes in the 77th and in the 90+3 to com­plete his hat trick as well to cap off the team’s biggest win of the sea­son and largest since their 10-0 pound­ing of Ea­gles FC on April 5, 2025.

Speak­ing af­ter the win, Jorsling cred­it­ed his play­ers for a pro­fes­sion­al per­for­mance and stay­ing fo­cused on the job at hand.

He added, “I was re­al­ly hap­py for the guys to score nine goals and for the hat-tricks for new guys, Jo­evin (Jones) and Dil­lon (Nicholas), es­pe­cial­ly Dil­lon be­cause he has been work­ing ex­treme­ly hard in train­ing on his all-round game.”

“So, it’s all about keep­ing up this high stan­dard and work­ing hard and build­ing our mo­men­tum to the game on Ash Wednes­day which is a mas­sive game for us be­cause we want to rep­re­sent the lo­cal league, our­selves as a team and by ex­ten­sion T&T.

Jorsling was al­so pleased that his team was click­ing on all cylin­ders as the sea­son nears the mid­way point of the fi­nal round, say­ing, “We are on course to de­fend our ti­tle, and the guys are click­ing at the right time.

“So, it’s about keep­ing work­ing hard and be­liev­ing in each oth­er as we go game by game,” he stat­ed.

In Sun­day’s open­er, the An­gus Eve-coached Club San­do kept up their ti­tle chal­lenge with a hard-fought 1-0 win over third-placed Po­lice FC, with for­mer Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League ‘Play­er of the Year’ Tarik Lee get­ting the lone strike in the 22nd minute, which left the Law­men a dis­tant third on 27 points, one more than Pris­ons FC, who have a match in hand.

Sun­day’s re­sults

Club San­do 1 (Tarik Lee 22nd) vs Mis­cel­la­neous Po­lice FC 0

De­fence Force 9 (Jo­evin Jones 12th, 49th, 61st, Nicholas Dil­lon 47th, 77th, 90+3, Ja­mali Gar­cia 16th, Ri­val­do Cory­at 22nd, Kevin Moli­no 57th vs Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers 0.

T&TPFL Tier I stand­ings

Teams*P*W*L*D*GF*GA*GD*Pts

1. De­fence Force*14*11*0*3*39*12*27*36

2. Club San­do FC*14*11*3*0*34*7*27*33

3. Mis­cel­lanous Po­lice FC*14*8*3*3*27*15*12*27

4. Pris­ons Ser­vice FC*13*8*3*2*22*12*10*26

5. AC PoS*13*6*3*4*22*16*6*22

6. Cen­tral FC Re­boot*13*5*5*3*21*25*-4*18

7. Jabloteh*13*4*6*3*22*29*-7*15

8. Cale­do­nia AIA*14*4*9*1*23*28*-5*13

9. 1976 FC Phoenix*13*4*9*0*16*30*-14*12

10. FC Ea­gles*13*3*9*1*20*28*-8*10

11. Point Fortin Civic*14*3*10*1*12*28*-16*10

12. TLH Rangers*14*2*9*3*11*39*-28*9

Wednes­day’s match­es

Venue: Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va:

MIC Cen­tral FC Re­boot vs San Juan Jabloteh, 6 p

Prison Ser­vice FC vs Ath­let­ic Club PoS, 8 pm