T&T de­fend­er Aubrey David re­turned to the De­porti­vo Sapris­sa start­ing line-up as his team bat­tled to a 2-2 draw away to bit­ter-ri­val Ala­jue­lense in their top-of-the-ta­ble Cos­ta Ri­can Pre­mier Di­vi­sion Clausura 'Clas­si­co' on Sun­day night.

Hav­ing missed his team's 1-0 win over Limon on Wednes­day due to an au­to­mat­ic sus­pen­sion af­ter the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of five yel­low-cards, the 29-year-old Guyana-born David played in the cen­tre of de­fence along­side David Guz­man.

But af­ter start­ing well and wast­ing an ear­ly chance via Chris­t­ian Bolanos, the league's top scor­er with 15 goals, Sapris­sa fell be­hind to a strike from Allen Guev­era in the 30th minute when the lat­ter found space atop the 18-yard box to fire a right-foot­ed ef­fort in­to the bot­tom right-hand cor­ner of the goal from a right-sided Ariel Las­siter cen­tre at the Es­ta­dio Ale­jan­dro Mor­era So­to, Ala­juela.

Nine min­utes in­to the sec­ond-half, Ala­jue­lense made it 2-0 when Jonathan Moya cap­i­talised on a slip by a Sapris­sa de­fend­er to get be­hind the de­fence down the left flank and picked out an on­rush­ing Las­siter to slot the ball past goal­keep­er Aaron Cruz.

De­spite the daunt­ing task of claw­ing their way back from a 2-0 deficit to main­tain their sev­en-point lead at the top with three match­es left, David and his team-mates did not drop their heads and in the 67th minute, Ariel Ro­driguez volleyed home a right-sided cor­ner to cut the lead in­to the half.

Sapris­sa then in­tro­duced Luis Stew­art Perez and By­ron Bonil­la, both in the 69th minute as they went in search of the equalis­er, and six min­utes be­fore the fi­nal whis­tle it came when Ro­driguez stabbed home his sec­ond of the con­test, from close range af­ter Ala­jue­lense goal­keep­er Leonel Mor­eira fum­bled a shot from just out­side the 18-yard box that al­most sneaked in at the near post.

De­spite the drawn re­sult, Sapris­sa im­proved to 43 points from 19 match­es af­ter push­ing their un­beat­en run to six match­es, sev­en points more than Ala­jue­lense while third-placed Here­di­ano has 33 points, two more than Cartagines.

Sapris­sa will have a chance to make cer­tain of the top spot in the Clausura when it en­ter­tains fifth-placed Jicar­al to­mor­row (Wednes­day) be­fore com­plet­ing the reg­u­lar-sea­son against sev­enth-placed Mu­nic­i­pal Gre­cia on Sat­ur­day and cel­lar-placed La U Uni­ver­si­tar­ios.

Speak­ing af­ter the match, David was quick to ad­mit it was the tough­est match his team had faced since the re­sump­tion of the league on May 20, fol­low­ing the break in the sea­son due to the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic.

He said, "It was a tough game as any Clas­si­co be­cause no­body wants to lose a Clas­si­co. We start­ed the game well and had ear­ly con­trol and had a chance to take the lead but un­for­tu­nate­ly, we went be­hind and at half-time, we were los­ing 1-nil."

David al­so praised his team-mates for show­ing re­al grit in over­com­ing the deficit say­ing: "We came back out sec­ond-half to get back even, but in­stead they scored an­oth­er one, but we showed re­al fight and de­ter­mi­na­tion to get a goal and get back in­to the game.

"In the last ten min­utes we con­tin­ued to pile on the pres­sure and got the equalis­er, and we didn't stop there as we con­tin­ued to ap­ply the pres­sure but time ran out on us and the game end­ed 2-2."

Look­ing ahead to the rest of the sea­son, David said he was con­fi­dent his team can get to the fi­nal.

"We have three more league match­es left and then the top four teams will con­test the semi­fi­nal, fol­lowed by the fi­nal, so we just need to win one of our re­main­ing match­es to be as­sured of top spot go­ing in­to the semi­fi­nals and we are con­fi­dent of get­ting to the fi­nal," said David.