Out-of-favour T&T in­ter­na­tion­als Jameel Nep­tune and Ty­rone Charles scored a goal each as T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League run­ner-up Cen­tral FC blanked Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic’s Mo­ca FC 2-0 to keep their chances of a semi­fi­nal spot from Group A of the Con­ca­caf Caribbean Cup alive at Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain on Tues­day night.

Af­ter a few close ef­forts from Daniel David, the 32-year-old Nep­tune de­served­ly opened the scor­ing in the 39th minute for Cen­tral FC when the cap­tain smashed a head­er off the un­der­side of the cross­bar from a Liam Burns' right-sided cross which they car­ried in­to the half-time in­ter­val.

In the sec­ond half, Burns went from hero to vil­lain when he was shown a straight red card by ref­er­ee James Ram­prashad in the 71st minute fol­low­ing an on-field scuf­fle.

But de­spite be­ing a man down, Cen­tral FC man­aged to over­come a pe­ri­od of pres­sure from Mo­ca FC to ex­tend their lead in the 78th minute via a gem of a free-kick from Charles who curled a right-foot­ed ef­fort from the left edge of the 18-yard box in­to the top right-hand cor­ner of the net past the des­per­ate dive of goal­keep­er Pas­cual Ramirez af­ter a foul by Mo­ca FC's Kelvin Du­ran.

Cen­tral FC then played out the fi­nal min­utes of the con­test cau­tious­ly to se­cure their first win in three match­es while ex­tend­ing Mo­ca FC's win­less run to six match­es in the Caribbean Cup– the longest for any Do­mini­can club in tour­na­ment his­to­ry.

The win moved Cen­tral FC to four points from three match­es, and in­to the sec­ond spot on the five-team ta­ble, two points be­hind the un­beat­en Ja­maican Pre­mier Foot­ball League run­ner-up Mount Pleas­ant Foot­ball Acad­e­my ahead of their meet­ing at the same venue next Tues­day. Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic's O&M FC is third with three points while Mo­ca FC, the Caribbean Foot­ball Union Club Shield win­ner, is bot­tom of the ta­ble with­out a point af­ter two match­es.

Speak­ing af­ter the win, the 36-year-old Charles, who was a 73rd minute in­tro­duc­tion for Isa­iah Lee, said it's al­ways a won­der­ful feel­ing to be on the win­ning team and to play a big part in help­ing my team win.

He added, "From the get-go, the mind­set was to come on and add as much as pos­si­ble to help the team cross the line with a vic­to­ry and I did ex­act­ly that.

With one match left to play against the ta­ble lead­ers, Charles said the mood of the team is a hap­py one af­ter get­ting their first win in three match­es.

"We have a job at hand to come home and get the six points from the two games. We're halfway through that and the mood is just hap­py in the camp right now."

Look­ing ahead to the clash with Mount Pleas­ant, Charles said, "We're go­ing with the mind­set to get the three points but we have to do the work on the draw­ing board first and on the pitch and then go out on the field and ex­e­cute it in the last game."

Coach Julius Ed­wards, com­ment­ing af­ter get­ting a win on his home de­but as head coach, added, "I feel very elat­ed know­ing that I came in the job on the first event and get a vic­to­ry. It was very beau­ti­ful and to get the team to buy in­to it at a short time and get this re­sult, it was re­al­ly, re­al­ly beau­ti­ful."

With re­gards to the win, Ed­wards said he thinks his team's dis­ci­pline on the night was key to the vic­to­ry.

He said, "We came out with dis­ci­pline and the guys came out as a col­lec­tive group and achieved the goal on the night, which was half of the goal ex­act­ly be­cause it's three points we got and as I tell you, six points we have to get at home here."

With the match to come against Mount Pleas­ant, Ed­wards said his team have to give them re­spect be­cause right now they haven't lost any match­es. They're com­ing home in­to our back­yard so we wouldn't give them no sort of room to do any­thing."

Ed­wards was al­so de­light­ed with the dis­play of his se­nior play­ers, in­clu­sive of scor­ers Nep­tune and Charles, both of whom he said had stel­lar per­for­mances.

"The team de­pend­ed on them and they came up full, full shut­tle for the team, so heads up to the se­nior play­ers and the role they played and guid­ing the oth­er young ones with them."

Ed­wards al­so re­flect­ed on the send­ing off of Burns, say­ing, "It's all about team man­age­ment, we'll have to meet and dis­cuss through the dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tees and all those things. We have to be able to con­trol our emo­tions, es­pe­cial­ly when we're look­ing to have a goal in front of us, so we'll go back to them. We'll go back and go through every­thing from the be­gin­ning again."

Tonight, Group A con­tin­ues with SV Robin­hood host­ing Uni­ver­si­dad O&M FC at the Dr Franklin Essed Sta­di­um in Para­mari­bo, Suri­name, while Mo­ca FC will take on Uni­ver­si­dad O&M FC next Wednes­day.

At the con­clu­sion of the group stage round robin, the top two teams will qual­i­fy for the crossover home-and-away semi­fi­nals, with the two group win­ners host­ing the re­turn-leg match­es.

For both the third-place match and the fi­nal, the re­turn-leg match­es will be host­ed by the high­er-ranked club in each pair­ing, de­ter­mined by the to­tal points ac­cu­mu­lat­ed through­out the com­pe­ti­tion.

At the end of the com­pe­ti­tion, three clubs, the two fi­nal­ists and the third-place win­ner, will qual­i­fy for the 2026 Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons Cup.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Caribbean cham­pi­on will earn a di­rect bye to the round-of-16.

Tues­day's Group A re­sults

Cen­tral FC (Jameel Nep­tune 39th, Ty­rone Charles 78th) vs Mo­ca FC 0

Cur­rent stand­ings

Group A:

Teams P W D L F A Pts

Mount Pleas­ant 2 2 0 0 3 0 6

Cen­tral FC 3 1 1 1 4 4 4

O&M FC 1 1 0 0 2 0 3

SV Robin­hood 2 0 1 1 2 3 1

Moca FC 2 0 0 2 0 4 0