Mis­cel­la­neous Po­lice made it two wins from as many match­es in a row when they de­feat­ed last sea­son’s sec­ond-place team, MIC Cen­tral FC Re­boot, 2-1 in the first game of a dou­ble­head­er at the Ari­ma Velo­drome on Fri­day night.

A dou­ble strike com­ing from Khadeem Hutchin­son did the trick for the Law­men, de­spite Kadeem Corbin’s lone item for the Cen­tral Sharks; how­ev­er, coach Todd Ryan is al­ready brac­ing for the ef­fects of a tough start to the sea­son on his play­ers. The team were served a tough start, hav­ing to face the top four teams from last sea­son in their first four match­es.

They over­came San Juan Jabloteh in their open­ing match 4-0 at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in Ba­co­let, To­ba­go. And on Fri­day, they edged Cen­tral FC. Their third game will be a mouth-wa­ter­ing clash with de­fend­ing champs De­fence Force on Sat­ur­day at the La Hor­quet­ta Recre­ation Ground, be­fore they square off with AC Port-of-Spain on No­vem­ber 14.

“For the short­ened sea­son, the play­ers did not pre­pare for the rigours that their bod­ies are go­ing through now. At some point in time, they will feel the ef­fects of it. Fri­day’s match was like a vir­tu­al fi­nal be­cause of the ri­val­ry be­tween the teams. The play­ers fought, they gave their all, and they got the re­sult, which is im­por­tant be­cause it is a re­sult-ori­en­tat­ed game.

Corbin’s goal was one of many that could have been scored on the night, as far as Cen­tral FC coach Julius Ed­wards be­lieves. His team had been re­duced to 10 men when de­fend­er Mau­rice Dick was red-card­ed as ear­ly as the 21st minute. But Ed­wards said the send­ing off hard­ly dis­rupt­ed their dom­i­nance of the match, on­ly that their goal-scor­ing let them down.

“We still con­trolled the game. We had more pos­ses­sion of the ball, and we cre­at­ed more chances, but we did not put away our op­por­tu­ni­ties. We will have to do a post-mortem on Mon­day dur­ing train­ing to cor­rect the set­backs in that game,” Ed­wards ex­plained.

Jabloteh bounces back against Cap­i­tal City Boyz 2-0.

Mean­while, San Juan Jabloteh re­bound­ed nice­ly from their 4-0 loss to Po­lice in their open­er by shut­ting out AC Port-of-Spain 2-0. David Mc­Shine and Ja­heim Faustin de­liv­ered for the San Juan men when they need­ed it the most. On­ly re­cent­ly, coach Mar­vin Gor­don called on his play­ers to dig deep, fol­low­ing their re­sult against the Law­men.

Gor­don cred­it­ed his play­ers, say­ing every­body worked re­al­ly hard for the win and they got it.

The cho­rus was dif­fer­ent for Gilbert Bateau, the AC Port-of-Spain coach, who told the me­dia his play­ers let it slip. “We un­der­es­ti­mat­ed our op­po­nents on the day, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter such a good re­sult against the De­fence Force last week. We all have to do some re­flec­tion now and de­cide how we move for­ward from here. But that is sports,” Bateau ex­plained.

The ac­tion in the league was sched­uled to con­tin­ue with De­fence Force tak­ing on FC Ea­gles at 5 pm at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va, while in the oth­er game, Cale­do­nia AIA and Club San­do were set for a show­down, yes­ter­day.

TO­DAY’S MATCH­ES

FC Phoenix vs Prison Ser­vices FC, at Ma­haica Oval, Point Fortin, 5 pm

Point Fortin Civis vs Ter­minex La Hor­quet­ta Rangers, Ma­haica Oval, Point Fortin, 7 pm