An El­ton John goal in the 75th minute as­sured that Club San­do FC re­tained sec­ond in Tier 1 of the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League on 30 points, with the end not far away.

The goal steered the South­ern­ers to a 1-0 vic­to­ry over bot­tom-of-the-stand­ings Point Fortin Civic at the Ma­haica Sport­ing Com­plex in Point Fortin on Sun­day (Jan­u­ary 18). How­ev­er, the lead­ers of the De­fence Force have a game in hand and will take on Cen­tral FC Re­boot to­mor­row (Wednes­day) from 8pm at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va, in a re­vised fix­ture.

Club San­do’s fluc­tu­at­ing move­ment in the stand­ings has not been a con­cern, hav­ing oc­cu­pied at least one of the top three spots over the past two months, but they would need De­fence Force, the reign­ing cham­pi­ons, to lose if they are to have a chance of wrestling the ti­tle away from them this sea­son.

De­fence Force con­tin­ued its un­beat­en run from the pre­vi­ous sea­son, amass­ing an im­pres­sive 37 match­es with­out a loss. Last week, they edged Cen­tral FC Re­boot 1-0 to move to 32 points from 12 match­es and are on course to suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend their crown.

Mean­while, AC Port-of-Spain was al­so on a win­ner’s row at the week­end, drub­bing Ter­minex La Hor­quet­ta Rangers 4-0 in the oth­er match of a dou­ble­head­er at Ma­haica Oval. Deisean Plaza sent the Cap­i­tal City Boyz ahead in the 13th minute, on­ly for Rangers’ Ke­sean St Rose to dis­play un­want­ed gen­eros­i­ty via an own goal in the 74th minute to hand AC Port-of-Spain a painstak­ing 2-0 lead.

The next two goals came late in the pro­ceed­ings, as the La Hor­quet­ta men blun­dered in the de­fence. First, Brent Sam made it 3-0 in the 90+2 minute. And when they were ex­pect­ed to hear the sound of the ref­er­ee’s whis­tle with the score at 3-0, Sedale McLean scored an­oth­er a minute lat­er, at 90+3, to fin­ish off a 4-0 re­sult.

RE­SULTS

Club San­do FC 1 (El­ton John 75th) vs Point Fortin Civic 0

AC Port-of-Spain 4 (Deisean Plaza 13th, Brent Sam 90+2, Sedale Mc Lean 90+3) vs Rangers 0 (Ke­sean St Rose own goal)

Teams*P*W*L*D*F*A*GD*Pts

1. De­fence Force FC*12*10*0*2*28*10*18*32

2. Club San­do FC*13*10*3*0*33*7*26*30

3. Mis­cel­lanous Po­lice FC*13*8*2*3*27*14*13*27

4. Prison Ser­vice FC*13*8*3*2*22*12*10*26

5. Ath­let­ic Club POS*13*6*3*4*22*16*6*22

6. Cen­tral FC Re­boot*12*5*5*2*19*23*-4*17

7. San Juan Jabloteh*13*4*6*3*22*29*-7*15

8. Cale­do­nia AIA*12*4*7*1*23*24*-1*13

9. FC Ea­gles*13*3*9*1*20*28*-8*10

10. 1976 FC Phoenix*12*3*9*0*14*30*-16*9

11. Ter­minex La Hor­quet­ta Rangers*13*2*8*3*11*30*-19*9

12. Point Fortin Civic FC*13*2*10*1*10*28*-18*7