Nigel Si­mon

Di­recTV North East Stars and Po­lice will be hop­ing to con­tin­ue their re­cent dom­i­nance over FC South End and St Ann's Rangers re­spec­tive­ly when the Dig­i­cel Pro Bowl qual­i­fiers takes place to­day from 6 pm. The qual­i­fiers in­volves the bot­tom four clubs on the 2010/2011 Dig­i­cel Pro League ten-team ta­ble and will take place at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um, Mal­abar. In the open­er, a some­what re­ju­ve­nat­ed Po­lice squad-which end­ed ninth in the league and was boost­ed by the re­turn of strik­er Ja­son Boodram-will tack­le the fi­nan­cial­ly strapped and short-hand­ed Rangers, eighth placed league fin­ish­ers. Two hours lat­er, the San­gre Grande-based Stars who end­ed the sea­son in sev­enth spot be­hind San Juan Jabloteh on goal-dif­fer­ence, will seek a third straight knock­out qual­i­fi­er win over South End this sea­son.

Stars al­so swept their two league en­coun­ters with South End. The Shur­land David-coached Stars, win­ner of the Lu­cozade Sports Goal Shield-af­ter al­so kick­ing off their cam­paign in the qual­i­fy­ing round with a 3-0 over South End-al­so had a 2-1 tri­umph in the First Cit­i­zens Cup pre­lim­i­nary round along with 2-1 and 3-0 league tri­umphs. But while Stars will be con­sid­ered clear favourites to book one of the two avail­able quar­ter­fi­nal places, the clash be­tween 2007 run­ner-up Rangers and Po­lice looks nice­ly poised based on head-to-head re­sults this sea­son. Rangers and Po­lice drew 1-1 in first round league ac­tion while the St Ann's club won 5-2 in the sec­ond round.

How­ev­er, Po­lice got sweet re­venge when it earned a 2-1 win in the round-of-16 of the Toy­ota Clas­sic last month, a re­sult it is ea­ger to re­peat. Speak­ing on the eve on the match, Po­lice tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor and for­mer na­tion­al coach Muham­mad Isa said his team was very hyped up for the match. While Isa was op­ti­mistic of his team's chances, Rangers' coach seemed a beat­en man al­ready and was ea­ger­ly look­ing for­ward to the end of the sea­son to be­gin the re­build­ing process of the team. "Right now our team is not well bal­anced at all," stressed Streete. "We have about 11 se­nior play­ers avail­able to us af­ter we had to dis­miss a few guys for breach­ing their con­tracts and this has forced us to throw some young­sters in­to the fir­ing line.

Streete al­so stat­ed that his team's train­ing ses­sion dur­ing the car­ni­val break did not go down too well.

"Our club de­pends on some fi­nan­cial sup­port from the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (Sportt) and some of the guys are still await­ing salaries so their mind is not in the right place. "But we are all pro­fes­sion­als and they are ex­pect­ed to put the best foot for­ward and I'm just hop­ing for the best come to­mor­row (to­day).

Tonight's win­ners will join de­fend­ing cham­pi­on, bmo­bile Joe Pub­lic, 2009 fi­nal­ists Cale­do­nia AIA, De­fence Force, W Con­nec­tion, Ma Pau and Jabloteh in the quar­ter­fi­nal round which kicks off on Fri­day March 18. In the tour­na­ment's six-year his­to­ry, W Con­nec­tion (2004 & 2007) and Jabloteh (2005 & 2006) have cap­tured the Pro Bowl ti­tle twice each with Joe Pub­lic (2009) and Cale­do­nia (2008), the oth­er win­ners. W Con­nec­tion has reached the fi­nal four times (2004-2007) and Jabloteh (three) and Cale­do­nia (two), with Rangers, De­fence Force and Joe Pub­lic, each mak­ing one ap­pear­ance.

To­day's Dig­i­cel Pro Bowl qual­i­fiers:

Venue: Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um, Mal­abar

Rangers vs Po­lice, 6pm

Stars vs South End, 8pm.