A 1-0 loss for Mis­cel­la­neous Po­lice FC on Fri­day night at the Ken Cooke Ground in St James, Port-of-Spain al­lowed AC Port of Spain (AC PoS), to as­sume the top po­si­tion in Tier I of the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League (TTPFL).

The "Law­men" had on­ly re­cent­ly tak­en the top spot for the first time af­ter sev­er­al cut­ting and chang­ing mea­sures at the be­gin­ning of the sea­son sought to bear fruit. But their time of reck­on­ing ar­rived on Fri­day night against the "Cap­i­tal City Boyz", the beat­en fi­nal­ist in their first ver­sion of the league.

De­spite the Law­men's strength in at­tack, it took a 17th-minute strike from cen­tral mid­field­er Du­ane Mukette to earn his team the win, which pushed AC PoS right to the top of the 11-team stand­ings with 18 points af­ter sev­en rounds of match­es.

In spite of the de­feat, how­ev­er, Po­lice still man­aged to hold on to sec­ond place on goal dif­fer­ence, as a bat­tling win al­so for the reign­ing cham­pi­on De­fence Force, 2-0 over Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers in the sec­ond match of a dou­ble­head­er at the St James fa­cil­i­ty, on­ly served to put the army coast-guard com­bi­na­tion team in the third spot on the ta­ble.

De­fence Force play­ers have not been as con­vinc­ing as they were in the pre­vi­ous sea­son de­spite their pos­i­tive start, but they gained the bet­ter of the La Hor­quet­ta-based team in a bruis­ing af­fair in which Rangers lost De­von Mor­ris and de­fend­er Daneil Cyrus, both shown the red card in the af­fair.

Justin Gar­cia and Ri­val­do Cory­at each got goals in the 67th and 85th minute, re­spec­tive­ly, pro­pelling the Army men to their fifth vic­to­ry of the sea­son.

Mean­while, To­ba­go's lethal goalscor­er Mick­aeel 'Jem' Gor­don stole the spot­light in the round of match­es by scor­ing a hat-trick in guid­ing his team To­ba­go 1976 Phoenix to a 5-1 thrash­ing of strug­gling Cen­tral FC at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in Ba­co­let, To­ba­go.

Re­al Se­bro opened the scor­ing for the To­bag­o­ni­ans in the 30th minute but the game had 'Jem' Gor­don writ­ten all over it. The 2023 Tier II "Play­er of the Year", fired his team 3-0 ahead via items in the 34th and 39th min­utes.

Do­minic Dou­glas then in­ter­vened for the Cen­tral Sharks with a 62nd-minute goal that re­duced the score to 2-1. But 'Jem' re­turned in the 77th minute to notch his hat-trick be­fore An­dell No­ray com­plet­ed the rout in the 91st minute.

Re­sults

AC PoS 1 (Du­ane Muck­ette 17th) vs Mis­cel­la­neous Po­lice FC 0

FC Phoenix 5 (Mick­aeel 'Jem' Gor­don 34th, 39th, 77th, Re­al Se­bro 30th, An­dell No­ray 91st) vs Cen­tral FC 1 (Do­minic Dou­glas 62nd)

De­fence Force 2 (Justin Gar­cia 67th, Ri­val­do Cory­at 85th) vs Rangers 0

To­day's match­es

Prison Ser­vice FC vs Cale­do­nia FC, Ari­ma Velo­drome, 6 pm

Stand­ings

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

1*AC PoS*7*6*0*1*19*5*18

2*Po­lice FC*8*5*2*1*17*6*17

3*De­fence Force*8*5*2*1*18*8*17

4*Club San­do*7*4*2*1*11*5*14

5*LH Rangers*7*4*0*3*14*10*12

6*Prison FC*7*3*0*4*11*17*9

7*Point Fortin*7*2*2*3*10*9*8

8*Cale­do­nia*6*2*0*4*8*10*6

9*1976 Phoenix*7*2*0*5*10*17*6

10*FC Ea­gles*7*1*2*4*6*11*5

11*Cen­tral FC*7*0*0*7*4*30*0