Re­tain­ing the Dig­i­cel Pro League ti­tle isn't the on­ly am­bi­tion of De­fence Force for the 2013-2014 sea­son ac­cord­ing to the sol­diers' head coach Ross Rus­sell.

But the Teteron-based army-coast guard com­bi­na­tion will kick things off with­out ace for­ward and last sea­son's top scor­er De­vorn Jorsling, be­gin­ning with a re­venge clash of the Dig­i­cel Char­i­ty Shield to­mor­row gainst Di­recTV W Con­nec­tion at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo from 7 pm.

The Char­i­ty Shield brings to­geth­er the league cham­pi­on (De­fence Force) and the Dig­i­cel Pro Bowl win­ner (W Con­nec­tion) of the pre­vi­ous sea­son.

And in the in­au­gur­al edi­tion last sea­son, both teams met with Con­nec­tion fin­ish­ing com­fort­able 2�0 win­ners against the sol­diers with a goal each by Shah­don Win­ches­ter and Jo­evin Jones.

This time around De­fence Force with a ba­si­cal­ly un­changed ros­ter, from last sea­son, will tack­le a new-look Con­nec­tion.

The Cou­va-based W Con­nec­tion are with­out na­tion­al mid­field­er Win­ches­ter who joined Fin­land's FF Jaro last Jan­u­ary, de­fend­er Daneil Cyrus and Mekeil Williams, both away on na­tion­al du­ty with the So­ca War­riors.

How­ev­er, the "Savon­net­ta Boys" boast pre-sea­son im­ports Ce­lio Guil­herme Da Sil­va San­tos and Joao Ana­nias Jor­dao Ju­nior of Brazil, as well as Colom­bians Yefer Steven Lozano Ru­biano, Yhon Stiv­en Reyes Lopez and Cami­lo An­dres Or­te­ga Di­az, and Ital­ian strik­er Mirko Delia.

On the oth­er hand, the De­fence Force squad is a very fa­mil­iar one, al­though the 2010-11 T&T Pro League/Toy­ota Play­er of the Year, Jorsling will be no­tably ab­sent, while de­fend­er Cur­tis Gon­za­les miss­es the match due to na­tion­al team du­ties.

The 29-year-old Jorsling, a army/coast-guard pri­vate, is cur­rent­ly on a pro­mo­tion­al course to­wards the rank of lance cor­po­ral and would on­ly be avail­able to coach Rus­sell from the end of Sep­tem­ber.

Team cap­tain and de­fend­er Corey Rivers will lead out the squad in­clu­sive of goal­keep­ers Kevin Gra­ham and Shel­don Clarke; de­fend­ers Devin Jor­dan, Mar­vin Jones, Rodell El­cock, Glynn Franklyn, Ak­lie Ed­wards; mid­field­ers Jer­wyn Balt­haz­ar, Dex­ter Pacheco, Josi­mar Bel­grave, Jemel Se­bro, Ker­ry Joseph, Sean Nar­cis, Ross Rus­sell Jr and at­tack­ers Kevon Carter and Richard Roy.

"This sea­son we are look­ing to fill the cab­i­net," said an am­bi­tious Rus­sell. "We are look­ing to get more tro­phies in there."

Last sea­son Rus­sell, with the help of able as­sis­tant Mar­vin Gor­don, led his troops to the league ti­tle with 49 points, six clear of sec­ond po­si­tioned Neal & Massy Cale­do­nia AIA, and nine points ahead of 2011-12 win­ner, W Con­nec­tion.

But the "Teteron Boys" came up short in their ef­fort to cap­ture any of the knock­out com­pe­ti­tions–First Cit­i­zens Cup, Toy­ota Clas­sic, FA Tro­phy, Lu­cozade Sport Goal Shield and Dig­i­cel Pro Bowl and will be ea­ger to add to their cof­fers.

By win­ning the league ti­tle, Rus­sell and the De­fence Force have qual­i­fied them­selves along with run­ner-up Cale­do­nia to chal­lenge the rest of the Caribbean for qual­i­fi­ca­tion in­to next sea­son's Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons League.

"Last (sea­son) I think we were a lit­tle shaky in the Cups, and we were too fo­cused on the league (ti­tle)," ex­plained Rus­sell, the two-time league win­ning coach of the De­fence Force.

"But I think the team has set dif­fer­ent goals," he con­tin­ued. "Be­fore I used to set the goals be­cause I love to play CFU (Caribbean Foot­ball Union) and Con­ca­caf (Cham­pi­ons League), and be­cause I think those are the right spots for clubs in T&T to show­case them­selves and their tal­ents, as well as stretch your coach­ing knowl­edge.

"So I think the team is more fo­cused this sea­son. Last sea­son we just want­ed to win back our (League) tro­phy that we lost to W Con­nec­tion, and we did that. So this sea­son we are go­ing to try to re­tain our ti­tle and try to win at least two or three (knock­out ti­tles)," Rus­sell said.

Rus­sell, who al­so led the sol­diers to league tri­umph in 2010-2011, be­fore a T&T is­sued State of Emer­gency (SOE) ham­pered the team's at­tempts to re­tain the ti­tle in 2011-2012, la­belled 2012-2013, a fan­tas­tic sea­son.

He said, "I think it was a fan­tas­tic sea­son for the club ... see­ing that for the first time all the teams did well. Our Pro team and Re­serve team won their leagues re­spec­tive­ly, and the Un­der-17, U-15 and U-13 teams fin­ished sec­ond, third and sec­ond, re­spec­tive­ly. So you can see the progress that we are mak­ing."

A for­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er, Rus­sell, praised the sup­port of San Juan Jabloteh, which was adopt­ed to serve as the youth teams of the De­fence Force last sea­son.

"Thanks to the Jabloteh or­gan­i­sa­tion that they helped us a bit in or­gan­is­ing our youth pro­gramme, be­cause I know they were, as we would say, starv­ing for foot­ball. Mr Azad Khan and the ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jabloteh, and my­self did a co-job with their youths and our youths and had strong teams," said Rus­sell.