Na­tion­al de­fend­er Justin Gar­cia head­ed home the lone goal of the con­test as De­fence Force eked out a 1-0 win over Cen­tral FC to claim the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League Tier I crown at the Ken Cooke Ground, St James Po­lice Bar­racks, Long Cir­cu­lar Road, St James, on Sun­day night.

The ti­tle was al­so the sec­ond in three years for De­fence Force af­ter their tri­umph in 2023 be­fore Ath­let­ic Club Port-of-Spain se­cured the ti­tle last year.

With four match­es left to play, De­fence Force, who ex­tend­ed their do­mes­tic league ti­tle wins to a record 24, pushed their points tal­ly to an unas­sail­able 50 from 18 match­es, 13 more than Cen­tral FC and cer­tain of a spot in the CON­CA­CAF Caribbean Cup as a top two fin­ish­er on the 12-team ta­ble. Mis­cel­la­neous Po­lice FC is third with 33 points, close­ly fol­lowed by San Juan Jabloteh with 32 and out­go­ing cham­pi­ons AC PoS next with 30 points; Club San­do is fifth with 28, and Cale­do­nia AIA is sixth with 27 in the hunt for a top three spot.

On Sun­day night, the de­ci­sive item came when Gar­cia found room in a crowd­ed Cen­tral FC 18-yard box to head home a right-sided free-kick from Cur­tis Gon­za­lves in the 51st minute. Cen­tral FC had on­ly them­selves to blame on the evening, though, as they cre­at­ed a num­ber of chances in both halves to take all three points but failed to put them past goal­keep­er Isa­iah Williams on de­but, and in the end, were made to rue their missed ef­forts to hand the Den­sill Theobald-coached unit the ti­tle.

A beam­ing Theobald, 42, speak­ing af­ter se­cur­ing his first do­mes­tic se­nior league crown as a coach and play­er, first thanked Chief Air Vice Mar­shall Dar­ryl Daniel for giv­ing him the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be part of a fan­tas­tic and suc­cess­ful or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Theobold, a for­mer play­er at Cale­do­nia AIA where he fell short of the league ti­tle, added, “I owe it to him for trust­ing in me and be­liev­ing in me. Sec­ond of all, I must give cred­it to my staff, as they have done a tremen­dous job in sup­port­ing and help­ing me in the de­ci­sion process, which we know is nev­er easy as a head coach of this suc­cess­ful or­gan­i­sa­tion.

‘And third­ly, the play­ers who I love dear­ly and who grew on me, I must give them cred­it for buy­ing in­to my phi­los­o­phy in terms of how I want­ed them to play and to see it was be­ing re­ward­ed like this with four games to go is a fan­tas­tic feel­ing.”

The 99-times capped for­mer T&T in­ter­na­tion­al mid­field­er, Theobald, re­flect­ing on his first meet­ing with Chief Daniel and man­ag­er Ot­t­ley, said, “I bold­ly told them I’m a win­ner, and I want to win and to be part of this his­tor­i­cal and suc­cess­ful or­gan­i­sa­tion, and it was my on­ly ob­jec­tive, and to see the play­ers buy in to it and the suc­cess we have got­ten is re­ward­ing to see we have ac­com­plished it.”

Theobold said he felt joy­ful, ap­pre­cia­tive and blessed to win the league for the first time, as it was not easy, but his at­ten­tion will quick­ly turn to the start of the First Cit­i­zens Cup on Wednes­day, where they will al­so be go­ing all out to win that crown for a third straight sea­son.

Flight Lieu­tenant Ryan Ot­t­ley, man­ag­er of the De­fence Force Foot­ball Club was al­so hap­py to see the de­ci­sions tak­en to make dras­tic tech­ni­cal changes at the start of the sea­son pay off. Re­flect­ing on the de­ci­sion to part ways with coach Lloyd “Sonoltee” An­drews who led the team to the league and knock­out dou­ble in 2023 along with his as­sis­tant and for­mer na­tion­al mid­field­er Hut­son ‘Bar­ber’ Charles and Devin El­cock, the team ad­min­is­tra­tor, ahead of the 2024/2045 do­mes­tic sea­son, Ot­t­ley said the de­ci­sion has been proven a right one.

Oth­er mem­bers of the 2023 coach­ing staff were Dar­nel Ed­wards (equip­ment man­ag­er), Keron Dorner (med­ical of­fi­cer), Demitri Vil­lo­re­al (phys­io­ther­a­pist), Cur­tis Wal­dron (train­er), and An­dre Marchan (goal­keep­er coach), An­drews said he could not say. Speak­ing af­ter his team se­cured the ti­tle on Sun­day, Ot­t­ley said, ‘The board of the foot­ball club de­cid­ed to take a risk and give these young vi­brant coach­es like my­self, De­vorn Jorsling and Mashama Bap­tiste an op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case their tal­ents.”

“We give them the sup­port, and the re­sources as best as we could and to­day (Sun­day), the board has no doubt, and we nev­er felt any par­tic­u­lar re­gret in our de­ci­sion to give these young as­pir­ing coach­es a chance.”

“Suc­ces­sion plan­ning and con­ti­nu­ity is what the board wants to see as we em­ploy this foot­ball pro­gram to con­tin­ue to sup­port the youths of our na­tion and pre­pare for na­tion­al du­ty.” “As we would have done in 1985 and those greater years where we would have seen suc­cess on the foot­ball club side and then re­alise it on the na­tion­al land­scape as well.”

In terms of the gen­er­al foot­ball pro­gram which has so re­sult­ed in the Tier I league ti­tle while the Tier II and the women’s teams both lead their ta­bles and are un­beat­en as well, Ot­t­ley said it was all part of a new vi­sion.”

He said, “We use to op­er­ate as in­di­vid­ual clubs but the re­struc­tur­ing brought all the clubs un­der one struc­ture, and it brought a sense of one­ness among the De­fence Force as we say, “one force, one team’ is part of our lo­go. So, bring­ing all the foot­ball teams un­der the one club struc­ture im­ple­ment­ing all the hard work in the ear­ly part of the sea­son and bring­ing in ex­perts to make sure that we were do­ing it right, in­clu­sive of coach Den­sil Theobald, Brent San­cho (ad­vi­sor), and some of the oth­er guys that would have been apart of T&T go­ing to the World Cup (Ger­many 2006), we would have seen what they would have done and they ad­vised us on what we need to do now.

“At the Tier II lev­el, which is our feed­er team to the Tier I, we look at de­vel­op­ing our young youths com­ing out of the In­ter­col cham­pi­onships, and with the women, we are look­ing to con­tin­ue with our 3W pro­gramme, giv­ing the women more com­pet­i­tive games and prepar­ing them for na­tion­al du­ty as well.

“So, the change would have been a re­struc­tur­ing of the en­tire pro­gram and re­struc­tur­ing all the clubs, bring­ing them un­der one gov­ern­ing struc­ture, and based up­on that, we are wit­ness­ing the suc­cess of the clubs at this point in time,” stat­ed Ot­t­ley.