Re­on Moore as­sist­ed on one goal and al­so scored to lead De­fence Force to a com­fort­able 3-0 vic­to­ry over W Con­nec­tion in the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League at the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um, Sta­di­um, Mara­bel­la on Sun­day.

The win all but ce­ment­ed the Army/Coast-Guard com­bi­na­tion team as the sec­ond club to rep­re­sent T&T in the CON­CA­CAF Caribbean Club Shield (two clubs) with 46 points from 18 match­es, along­side ta­ble lead­ers AC Port-of-Spain who blanked Cunu­pia FC 4-0 with three of the goals com­ing in the last five min­utes at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um, Mal­abar.

AC PoS with 48 points is as­sured of a CON­CA­CAF Caribbean Club Shield spot as one of the top two clubs by Sun­day’s dead­line giv­en to the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion by the con­fed­er­a­tion.

The bat­tle came down to De­fence Force and Tiger Tanks Club San­do, for the sec­ond spot while the third-placed team had the con­so­la­tion of com­pet­ing in the con­fed­er­a­tion’s low­er-lev­el tour­na­ment, the CON­CA­CAF Caribbean Cup.

On Thurs­day last, the ‘Teteron Men’ gained the up­per hand in the bat­tle for sec­ond with a 2-0 win over Club San­do to move ahead of their ri­vals.

Af­ter a goal­less first half, Moore turned provider for his team’s open­er when he head­ed a long flight­ed free kick from half-time in­tro­duc­tion Cur­tis Gon­za­les back across the 18-yard box for the tow­er­ing fig­ure of Brent Sam to head past goal­keep­er Den­zil Smith for the 1-0 lead.

Two min­utes lat­er, Sam again got his head on­to a cross and nod­ded it down for an on­rush­ing Dwight Quin­tero who had his pow­er­ful close-range ef­fort bril­liant­ly blocked out by Smith at point-blank range, on­ly for Moore to tap home the re­bound from less than three yards out to dou­ble the vis­i­tors lead.

The match was all over by the 77th minute when an­oth­er sec­ond-half in­tro­duc­tion, Kai­him Thomas, made his first ap­pear­ance since join­ing from Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers in mid-week, col­lect­ing a long clear­ance from goal­keep­er Christo­pher Biggette.

With acres of space in front of him, Thomas un­leashed a right-foot­ed ef­fort which was charged down by the W Con­nec­tion de­fence, but in­to the path of an un­marked Justin Sadoo, who drilled a low right foot­er in­to the bot­tom of the left cor­ner of the goal for a 3-0 score, and cer­tain of fin­ish­ing sec­ond on the stand­ings by the end of the evening.

Up at Mal­abar, Sedale Mc Lean put AC PoS ahead in the 35th minute and they had to wait un­til the 85th minute be­fore John-Paul Rochford made it 2-0 fol­lowed by strikes from de­fend­er Robert Primus in the 87th, and cap­tain Du­ane Muck­ette two min­utes in­to time added on.

Hav­ing missed out on qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the ma­jor CON­CA­CAF Club com­pe­ti­tion, Club San­do al­so suf­fered a blow in the ti­tle race with four match­es left to play, go­ing un­der to Po­lice 2-1 at the St James Po­lice Bar­racks Train­ing Ground, Long Cir­cu­lar Road, St James to stay third, be­ing sev­en points adrift of lead­ers AC PoS, and five be­hind sec­ond-placed De­fence Force.

Club San­do wast­ed the chance to go ahead against the law­men when strik­er Nicholas Dil­lon had his penal­ty at­tempt saved by goal­keep­er Adri­an Fon­cette, who ear­li­er con­ced­ed the foul against the burly strik­er.

Po­lice went in­to the half-time in­ter­val 2-0 ahead thanks to goals from Jabari Mitchell, from the penal­ty spot and re­cent ac­qui­si­tion Jo­evin Jones be­fore Nathaniel James cut the lead in half in the 61st minute, how­ev­er, the Law­men held on for the win to strength­en their hold on the fifth spot with 31 points.

The oth­er ear­ly kick­off be­tween San Juan Jabloteh and Mor­vant Cale­do­nia AIA at the Ato Boldon Recre­ation Ground, Bourg Mu­la­tresse, San Juan was post­poned due to a wa­ter­logged field. There were scores up to press time in the Rangers vs Pris­ons at La Hor­quet­ta, and Point Fortin Civic vs Cen­tral FC at Ma­haica Sport­ing Com­plex, Point Fortin.

Sun­day’s Re­sults

De­fence Force 3 (Brent Sam 47th, Re­on Moore 49th, Justin Sadoo 77th) vs W Con­nec­tion 0

Po­lice FC 2 (Jabari Mitchell pen, Jo­evin Jones) vs Club San­do 1 (Nathaniel James 61st)

AC Port-of-Spain 4 (Sedale Mc Lean 35th, John-Paul Rochford 85th, Robert Primus 87th, Du­ane Muck­ette 90+2) vs Cunu­pia FC 0

Tier II re­sults

Guaya Unit­ed 0 v De­fence Force 0

Lat­est stand­ings

Place Team P W D L F A Pts

1 AC PoS 18 16 0 2 52 13 48

2 De­fence Force 18 15 1 2 43 11 46

3 Club San­do 18 13 2 3 37 18 41

4 L.H Rangers 17 12 1 4 52 24 37

5 Po­lice 18 10 1 7 37 30 31

6 Cen­tral FC 17 8 1 8 30 33 25

7 W Con­nec­tion 18 5 4 9 17 26 19

8 Pt Fortin Civic 17 5 3 9 15 20 18

9 Mor­vant Cale­do­nia 17 3 2 12 17 43 11

10 Pris­ons Ser­vice 17 3 2 12 10 42 11

11 Jabloteh 17 2 3 12 19 39 9

12 Cunu­pia FC 18 2 2 14 10 40 8