South­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (SFA) cham­pi­on Am­plia Pitch­men FC and East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion win­ner Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta XF will both be hop­ing to se­cure their sec­ond win from as many match­es when they meet in the fea­ture match of a dou­ble-head­er of the As­cen­sion Tour­na­ment Foot­ball-spon­sored six-club Zon­al Cham­pi­on of Cham­pi­ons (CoC) on Fri­day.

The match be­tween Pitch­men and La Hor­quet­ta kicks off at 8 pm at the Phase II La Hor­quet­ta Recre­ation Ground, La Hor­quet­ta and will be pre­ced­ed by the Bel­mont FC and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Pre­mier Di­vi­sion win­ners, 1976 FC Phoenix en­counter two hours ear­li­er.

Both Pitch­men FC and La Hor­quet­ta will en­ter the match brim­ming with con­fi­dence fol­low­ing wins in their re­spec­tive open­ers on Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 3 with both coach­es ex­pect­ing a tight and en­ter­tain­ing en­counter.

In the open­er, Pitch­men FC got a goal in each half from Tequan Ro­driguez while N’Kosi Charles added the third in a 3-0 tri­umph over Cen­tral Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion win­ners, Re­al Cen­tral FC, while na­tion­al winger Ross Rus­sell Jr al­so scored a dou­ble to lead La Hor­quet­ta XF to a 5-1 spank­ing of North­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion cham­pi­on, Bel­mont FC.

Speak­ing ahead of their clash, Brent Richard­son, coach of the SFA cham­pi­ons said his team will be keen to build on their open­ing-round win de­spite com­ing up against the much-fan­cied EFA ti­tle hold­ers in their own back­yard.

He said, "Our guys were not ful­ly fit go­ing in­to the first match, but we were able to go out and per­form to the best that we could on the day, and come away with a pos­i­tive re­sult, so cred­it must be giv­en to the en­tire team and coach­ing staff."

"We have a few ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers, but a lot of the guys are in­ex­pe­ri­enced and this lev­el of foot­ball against the oth­er zones is an­oth­er step up for them, and I am pleased with the way they coped.

"Com­ing in­to this tour­na­ment we were off the mind­set that we are play­ing five fi­nals, and if we are to be crowned cham­pi­ons, we need­ed to win each fi­nal, and so far, so go.

"So against Rangers, we will ap­proach the game in the same way with the mind­set to win the match. Rangers will be at home and ex­pect­ed to have more sup­port, but our guys are keen­ly look­ing for­ward to this chal­lenge against a very good team, and we are con­fi­dent of putting up an­oth­er good show­ing," said Richard­son.

Dave Quam­i­na, coach of the La Hor­quet­ta Rangers team was al­so con­fi­dent in his team's chances of se­cur­ing a sec­ond win while giv­ing his younger play­ers the op­por­tu­ni­ty to gain more ex­pe­ri­ence.

Quam­i­na said, "If you looked at our line-up for the open­ing match, we had St Bene­dict's Col­lege cap­tain Tarik Lee in our start­ing line and he equipped him­self very well, along with Re­al Gill and Isa­iah Lee.

"So while we ex­pect this match to be an­oth­er tough test we will con­tin­ue to pro­vide the chances for the younger guys in the club.

Re­flect­ing on the win over Bel­mont, Quam­i­na said de­spite the lop­sided score­line, his team did not have it easy.

"Bel­mont played a good game and was very or­gan­ised, and in the end, I felt the lev­el of fit­ness was a big dif­fer­ence and played a key role in our win, and I ex­pect­ed Pitch­men to pro­vide a stern test as well."

Quam­i­na al­so said he felt more fo­cus could be put on the zon­al lev­el of foot­ball as there were a lot of play­ers with the qual­i­ty to be found at that lev­el.

"A lot of peo­ple un­der­es­ti­mate the zon­al foot­ball com­pe­ti­tions, but there is a lot of un­tapped tal­ent at that lev­el and I be­lieve as coach­es it will help our clubs at the high­er lev­el if we pay some at­ten­tion to the tal­ent pool there with an eye to scout­ing play­ers for the pro­fes­sion­al clubs."

Bel­mont FC will have a chance to re­deem them­selves when they come up against To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Pre­mier Di­vi­sion win­ners, 1976 FC Phoenix in Fri­day’s open­er at 6 pm.

Re­al Cen­tral FC is on a bye this week while the East­ern Coun­ties Foot­ball Union (EC­FU) rep­re­sen­ta­tive is still to be de­ter­mined.

The win­ners of the round-robin com­pe­ti­tion will take home $30,000 while the run­ners-up get $15,000, and the third-place fin­ish­er, $10,000.

Re­sults

Feb­ru­ary 3:

Round One:

Pitch­men FC (SFA) 3 (Tequan Ro­driguez 24th, 47th, N’Kosi Charles 89th) vs Re­al Cen­tral FC (CFA) 0

La Hor­quet­ta XF (EFA) 5 (Ross Rus­sell Jr 53rd, 81st, Tarik Lee 44th, Re­al Gill 85th, Isa­iah Lee 89th) vs Bel­mont FC (NFA) 1 (Kea­gan Gul­ston 74th)

To­mor­row's match­es

Round Two

Venue: Phase II La Hor­quet­ta Recre­ation Ground, La Hor­quet­ta.

1976 Phoenix FC (TFA) vs Bel­mont FC (NFA), 6 pm

La Hor­quet­ta XF (EFA) vs Pitch­men FC (SFA), 8 pm