Mis­cel­la­neous Po­lice, last sea­son's third-place team in Tier I of the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League (TTPFL), will hope for bet­ter re­sults when they open the 2025/2026 sea­son against San Juan Jabloteh in the open­ing match of a dou­ble­head­er at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in Ba­co­let, To­ba­go, on Oc­to­ber 24 from 6 pm.

Jabloteh fin­ished fifth last sea­son on 38 points and just missed out on the ad­di­tion­al Con­ca­caf Caribbean Cup spot giv­en to the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA). Usu­al­ly, the top two teams in the League, which turned out to be De­fence Force and Cen­tral FC, earn the right to con­test the Con­ca­caf Caribbean Cup Tour­na­ment, while the third-place team gets to play in the Con­ca­caf Caribbean Shield.

Last sea­son, for the first time, the TTFA re­ceived an ad­di­tion­al spot, which went to the fourth-place team, AC Port-of-Spain, get­ting the bet­ter of San Juan Jabloteh with 40 points.

Jabloteh coach Mar­vin Gor­don is ea­ger to con­tin­ue where he left off, af­ter his youth­ful team held its own among the big guns in lo­cal foot­ball. The Jabloteh pro­gramme be­gan its screen­ing ses­sions for play­ers re­cent­ly, but with a sol­id base, be­ing dri­ven by present and past play­ers from the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL), Gor­don is con­fi­dent of a much bet­ter show­ing than last sea­son.

On­ly last week, he em­braced the re­turn of his in­stru­men­tal goal-scor­er Der­rel "Zoom Zoom" Gar­cia, who is back from a three-month loan spell in Guyana with Slingerz FC. Though he is ex­pect­ed to re­turn to his school, St Bene­dict’s Col­lege, the young strik­er has said he is not in­ter­est­ed in rep­re­sent­ing the in­sti­tu­tion in the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion of the SS­FL this sea­son.

Po­lice, on the oth­er hand, have lost key play­ers Tyrese Bai­ley and Rakim Cadie, but coach Todd Ryan is ea­ger­ly an­tic­i­pat­ing the re­lease of cer­tain play­ers who are on his re­cruit­ing list. Ryan took over from Wen­dell Joseph, who is abroad, and told Guardian Me­dia that al­though he has a strong core of play­ers, he wants to add some fire­pow­er this sea­son.

Ryan with­held the names of play­ers on his re­cruit­ing ros­ter, say­ing he want­ed them to clear things up with their clubs be­fore he could re­lease in­fo on them. In the mean­time, though, Jo­evin Jones, the for­mer na­tion­al mid­field­er, is again ex­pect­ed to spear­head the Law­men's at­tack, along­side Jabari Mitchell, with Josi­mar Bel­grave hold­ing their back­line se­cure.  

The match be­tween Ter­minex La Hor­quet­ta Rangers and FC Phoenix will fol­low at 8 pm.

Phoenix earned a spot in the 2023/2024 sea­son in Tier I of the TTPFL fol­low­ing the tri­umph in the Tier II sea­son by beat­ing Pe­tit Val­ley/Diego Mar­tin Unit­ed 2-1 in the Play­offs at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um. Boast­ing play­ers with im­pres­sive re­sumes in the pro­fes­sion­al zone, in­clud­ing Mick­ael Jem Gor­don and Trevin Cae­sar, the team went un­beat­en in the in­au­gur­al league sea­son.

How­ev­er, the La Hor­quet­ta Rangers men will be no easy chal­lengers, de­spite strug­gling last sea­son with an eighth-place fin­ish with 22 points.

Cham­pi­on De­fence Force will be­gin the de­fence of its ti­tle two days lat­er, on Oc­to­ber 26, with a clash against Ath­let­ics Club Port-of-Spain (AC PoS) at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo from 7 pm. Pre­ced­ing the fea­ture match on the day will be the clash be­tween FC Ea­gles and Club San­do at 5 pm.

AC PoS  is un­cer­tain to hold on to coach Walt Nor­ie­ga, who is still drawn in ne­go­ti­a­tions with the club’s man­age­ment for un­paid wages. Nor­ie­ga showed up at a prac­tice on Wednes­day at the Train­ing Ground of the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, and as­sessed the team, say­ing they should be fine to get the sea­son go­ing un­der coach­es Gilbert Bateau and Devin El­cock.

Some of the reg­u­lar faces are still on the ros­ter, such as Gabriel Nan­ton, Nathan Lewis, Le­ston Paul, and Josi­ah Wil­son; how­ev­er, the team is ea­ger­ly await­ing a move from the De­fence Force’s lanky strik­er, Brent Sam, to make the cross.      

The army/coast guard/civil­ian com­bi­na­tion team played un­beat­en through­out the sea­son and won the ti­tle with four match­es to go. They al­so went on to win the First Cit­i­zens Knock Out Cup and re­cent­ly ad­vanced to the semi­fi­nals of the Con­ca­caf Caribbean Cup.

TTPFL Tier I match­es

Oc­to­ber 24 (At Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um, Ba­co­let)

San Juan Jabloteh vs Mis­cel­la­neous Po­lice, 6 pm

Ter­minex La Hor­quet­ta Rangers, 8 pm

Oc­to­ber 25 (At Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va)

Prison Ser­vice FC vs Cale­do­nia AIA, 5 pm

MIC Cen­tral FC Re­boot vs Point Fortin Civic, 7 pm-

Oc­to­ber 26 (At Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo)

FC Ea­gles vs Club San­do, 5 pm,

De­fence Force vs Ath­let­ic Club PoS, 7 pm