T&T strik­er Mar­cus Joseph con­tin­ued his ear­ly sea­son rich vein of form by scor­ing a stun­ning brace to lead Mo­hammedan Sport­ing Club to an em­phat­ic 3-1 vic­to­ry over Tol­ly­gun­je Agraga­mi in the Sis­ter Nivedi­ta Uni­ver­si­ty (SNU)-spon­sored Cal­cut­ta Foot­ball League Pre­mier Di­vi­sion A qual­i­fi­er at the Kalyani Sta­di­um on Wednes­day.

The 30-year-old Joseph who just failed to lead Mo­hammedan SC to the In­di­an Du­rand Cup ti­tle af­ter a 1-0 loss to FC Goa in the fi­nal on Sat­ur­day last, opened the scor­ing for the 11-time tour­na­ment win­ners Mo­hammedan SC in the 19th minute which they car­ried in­to the half-time in­ter­val.

Eight min­utes af­ter the re­sump­tion Phrang­ki Buam dou­bled the ad­van­tage for Mo­hammedan be­fore Joseph, who was the Du­rand Cup "Gold­en Boot" win­ner with five goals got his sec­ond in the 73rd to put his team well on the way to vic­to­ry.

With sev­en min­utes left in the con­test, Christo­pher Chizo­ba pulled a goal back for Tol­ly­gun­je Agraga­mi from the penal­ty-spot, but it was too lit­tle to late to de­ny Joseph and his team mates the vic­to­ry.

Mo­hammedan falls short in Du­rand Cup fi­nal

On Sun­day, Joseph's Mo­hammedan came up short in the In­di­an Du­rand Cup fi­nal, los­ing 1-0 to FC Goa in front of 34,000 spec­ta­tors at their home venue, the Salt Lake Sta­di­um in Kolkata.

Edu Be­dia pro­duced a spec­tac­u­lar fin­ish curl­ing home a free-kick mid­way in the ex­tra-time as FC Goa beat the home favourites to win their maid­en Du­rand Cup while Mo­hammed just failed to add to their four pre­vi­ous tri­umphs, the last of which came in 2013.

The two teams were locked goal­less at the end of reg­u­la­tion time be­fore the Span­ish play-mak­er came up with a bril­liant fin­ish in the 105th minute to de­cide the ti­tle.

It was on­ly a warm-up tour­na­ment but the fi­nal be­tween this sea­son’s In­di­an Su­per League (ISL) favourites FC Goa, and I-League con­tender Mo­hammedan, who com­pete si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly in the Cal­cut­ta Pre­mier League, pro­vid­ed plen­ty of talk­ing points go­ing in­to the be­gin­ning of the new sea­son.

FC Goa main­tained their 100 per cent record with the win to be crowned cham­pi­ons of Asia’s old­est Cup com­pe­ti­tion.

The goal hand­ed Goa’s Span­ish coach Juan Fer­ran­do his first ti­tle with the club af­ter he took over last year. De­spite the loss, Joseph, who led pre­vi­ous club Goku­lam Ker­ala to the ti­tle two years ago over Mo­hun Bagan was named as the “Gold­en Boot” win­ner with five goals, the same as FC Goa’s De­ven­dra Mur­gaonkar while fel­low T&T in­ter­na­tion­al Willis Plaza end­ed with four goals for FC Del­hi.