Clay­ton Clarke

De­fend­ing To­ba­go In­ter­col cham­pi­ons Ma­son Hall Sec­ondary re­main on course to de­fend their ti­tle with a hard fought 5-4 penal­ty shoot-out win over Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary, at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in Ba­co­let yes­ter­day. In the first semi­fi­nal, Ma­son Hall play­ers showed great fight­ing spir­it af­ter they over­came the odds of be­ing a goal down and their cap­tain Omar Charles sent off. The game matched two teams packed with fit and quick play­ers but nei­ther were able to break the dead­lock as the teams when in­to the half go­a­less.

Dar­i­on Moses opened the scor­ing for Scar­bor­ough in the 51th minute. The tall mid­field­er put his side ahead de­spite suf­fer­ing a in­jury to his head fol­low­ing a col­li­son. Ma­son Hall ap­plied the pres­sure and seemed set to equalised un­til Ma­son Hall skip­per was shown a red card af­ter he was found quarelling with one of his play­ers. De­spite be­ing a man down and with­out their most in­flu­en­tial Ma­son Hall over­came their set­backs and equalised nine min­utes from the end reg­u­la­tion time through Aki­ni James.

The match went im­me­di­ate­ly to penal­ty kicks and Ma­son Hall woes con­tin­ue as they missed the first kick. How­ev­er, they were giv­en a life line af­ter Scar­bor­ough missed the third and fifth. Bran­don Joseph then slot­ted in his side's fifth and fi­nal kick to send the Ma­son Hall fans cel­e­brate. The pe­tit sec­ond for­mer was re­lieved as he was in­volved in the dis­pute that led to the send­ing off of his cap­tain. In the sec­ond semi­fi­nal, 2010 To­ba­go League cham­pi­on Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary Com­pre­hen­sive played Rox­bor­ough Sec­ondary.