Luke Phillips and Daniel Jones were each on tar­get twice, to give Guapo Up­ris­ing Youths a de­sired start to the de­fence of their ti­tle in the third De­porti­vo Point Fortin (PF) Com­mu­ni­ty Foot­ball League.

On Fri­day night in the sec­ond match of a dou­ble-head­er at the Ma­haica Sport­ing Com­plex in Point Fortin, the two-time cham­pi­on whipped Fan­ny Vil­lage Unit­ed, 4-0. This af­ter, Ce­dros Pi­rates beat Egypt Unit­ed, 3-1 win, in the open­ing match.

In front of an ap­pre­cia­tive crowd of some 300 spec­ta­tors, Phillips opened his ac­count in the 13th minute. He then dou­bled his tal­ly and his side’s ad­van­tage in the 23rd. The Guapo-based team didn’t have to wait long for a third item as a minute lat­er, Jones (24th) net­ted the first goal of his dou­ble.

Guapo Up­ris­ing searched for more goals in the first half but none came and they had to set­tle for a 3-0 lead at half­time.

Not much had changed in­to the sec­ond half in terms of the Guapo play­ers’ in­ten­si­ty as they kept at­tack­ing and were re­ward­ed in the 56th with Jones scor­ing his sec­ond goal and his team’s fourth.

Guapo Youths came close to scor­ing sev­er­al times but none bore fruit. How­ev­er, they were still hap­py to come away with the one-sided four-goal win to close off the open­ing night’s ac­tiv­i­ties.

Ear­li­er, Ce­dros Pi­rates had three dif­fer­ent play­ers find­ing the back of the net. Wen­dell Collins scored the open­er in the 34th, Dale Bish­op added an­oth­er in the 57th and Ker­el Bartholomew sealed the win in the 65th.

Lamed Guis­chard net­ted the con­so­la­tion goal for Egypt Unit­ed in the 77th.

Be­fore the kick-off of the first match, Sean East­man, a di­rec­tor on the board, brought greet­ings on be­half of De­porti­vo PF and shared his ex­cite­ment about open­ing the third edi­tion of the league.

He said, “First­ly, I would like to thank the most high, for guid­ing us to again bring our com­mu­ni­ties to­geth­er to work hand-in-hand with all our com­mu­ni­ties for this pos­i­tive project.

“De­porti­vo con­tin­ues to work with the Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion along with oth­er en­ti­ties to have the CFL. The com­pe­ti­tion con­tin­ues to grow and pro­vides an av­enue for the young peo­ple in the South­west­ern penin­su­la to ex­hib­it their skills, pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty for bud­ding en­tre­pre­neurs, a fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed event for all to en­joy for sev­en weeks.

“This year, we are pay­ing trib­ute to one of our icon­ic coach­es that passed a month ago, by nam­ing the ‘Most Out­stand­ing Coach’ tro­phy af­ter him, the Neville Fred­er­ick tro­phy. We look for­ward to an ex­cit­ing sev­en weeks of com­pe­ti­tion, wish­ing all the teams and man­agers all the best, and to the fans, we hope you en­joy every bit of it!”

There was a minute of si­lence ahead of the sec­ond match in mem­o­ry of Fred­er­ick.

Deputy May­or Coun­cil­lor Kwe­si Thomas, rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Egypt, was among sev­er­al Coun­cil­lors from the var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties present to sup­port the crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tive as well as fel­low Coun­cil­lor Steve Guishard, rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Ma­haica/New­lands, who is al­so one of De­porti­vo PF’s found­ing di­rec­tors.

The oth­ers were Coun­cil­lor Christo­pher Wright (Hol­ly­wood) and Coun­cil­lor Leslie Pas­cal (New Vil­lage).

Twelve (12) teams, split in­to two groups, are bat­tling for the top prize of $15,000. The sec­ond-placed fin­ish­er will col­lect $10,000 with the third-placed team tak­ing home $8,000 and the fourth-placed team gets $4,000. The cham­pi­on will once again win cham­pi­onship rings do­nat­ed by the Muhammed Isa Foun­da­tion.

In­di­vid­ual prizes in­clud­ing “Man of the Match” Most Valu­able Play­er (MVP), Youth MVP, and the Neville “Coachie” Fred­er­ick award for “Coach of the Year” will be pre­sent­ed at the end of the sea­son.

Ac­tion con­tin­ues this week­end, with dou­ble-head­ers on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day at the Ma­haica Sport­ing Com­plex and La Brea grounds.

Re­sults

Ce­dros Pi­rates 3 (Wen­dell Collins 34th, Dale Bish­op 57th, Ker­el Bartholomew 65th) vs Egypt Unit­ed 1 (Lamed Guis­chard 77th)

Guapo Up­ris­ing Youths 4 (Luke Phillips 13th, 23rd, Daniel Jones 24th, 56th) vs Fan­ny Vil­lage Unit­ed 0.

Match­es

Fri­day (Ma­haica Sports Com­plex)

(Pace) Lake­view Unit­ed vs Ma­haica FC, 6pm

Cochrane Chal­lengers vs Pa­lo Seco Trip­py FC, 8pm

Sat­ur­day (La Brea Grounds)

New Vil­lage FC vs Vance Riv­er Ball­stars, 6 pm

Point Ligoure Unit­ed vs La Brea All­stars, 8 pm