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Saturday, July 5, 2025

Scotiabank defends CariFin football crown in thriller

by

Sport Desk
50 days ago
20250515
Members of Scotiabank football team and supporters celebrate winning the CariFin Games football tournament at Republic Bank Grounds, Barataria on Saturday.

Members of Scotiabank football team and supporters celebrate winning the CariFin Games football tournament at Republic Bank Grounds, Barataria on Saturday.

In a dra­mat­ic con­clu­sion to the pre­mier sport­ing event of T&T’s fi­nan­cial sec­tor, Sco­tia­bank TT has se­cured its sec­ond con­sec­u­tive cham­pi­onship at the Car­iFin Games Foot­ball Tour­na­ment. Now in its 15th year, the tour­na­ment cul­mi­nat­ed in an elec­tri­fy­ing fi­nal that saw Sco­tia­bank tri­umph 2-0 over T&T Mort­gage Bank (TTMB) at Re­pub­lic Bank Grounds, Barataria on Sat­ur­day (May 10).

The vic­to­ry marks a re­mark­able come­back sto­ry for Sco­tia­bank, which wasn’t among the top three con­tenders head­ing in­to the semi­fi­nals but staged a stun­ning up­set against tour­na­ment favourites. Mean­while, TTMB’s jour­ney to the fi­nal was equal­ly im­pres­sive, re­turn­ing to com­pe­ti­tion af­ter a five-year ab­sence since 2019 and im­me­di­ate­ly mak­ing their pres­ence felt with a sec­ond-place fin­ish.

“Pas­sion. From the be­gin­ning, the guys came out fo­cused. We had a clear goal—to re­main cham­pi­ons and de­fend our ti­tle from last year,” said Mar­vin Springer, Sco­tia­bank team cap­tain. “Our strat­e­gy was straight­for­ward—play hard. We came pre­pared with a clear for­ma­tion, and every play­er un­der­stood their role. That al­lowed us to ex­e­cute ef­fec­tive­ly right down to the fi­nal whis­tle.”

The tour­na­ment utilised a bal­anced round-robin for­mat where all sev­en fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions faced each oth­er once, with each team play­ing six match­es. This sin­gle round-robin phase de­ter­mined the top four teams that ad­vanced to the semi­fi­nals.

The dra­ma of the tour­na­ment cen­tred on Sco­tia­bank’s route to the fi­nal. En­ter­ing the knock­out phase, they sat fourth in the stand­ings with just 11 points, trail­ing well be­hind the dom­i­nant Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT) with 15 points, Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion’s (UTC) 12 points, and tied with TTMB’s 11 points. What made Sco­tia­bank’s po­si­tion even more pre­car­i­ous was their goal-scor­ing drought—they had net­ted just one goal dur­ing the en­tire group stage, com­pared to CBTT’s nine and UTC’s ten.

De­spite these chal­lenges, Sco­tia­bank’s re­silience shone through in the semi­fi­nals, where they faced the tour­na­ment’s top seed, CBTT. In a tense de­fen­sive mas­ter­class that end­ed 0-0, Sco­tia­bank ad­vanced thanks to an “Most Valu­able Play­er” (MVP) per­for­mance by Nkosi Ifill, stun­ning the pre­vi­ous­ly un­de­feat­ed Cen­tral Bank squad, who had not lost a sin­gle match in reg­u­la­tion time. The oth­er semi­fi­nal saw TTMB de­feat UTC 1-0, set­ting up an un­ex­pect­ed fi­nal be­tween the tour­na­ment’s third and fourth-placed teams.

In­di­vid­ual achieve­ments were high­light­ed by dual MVP ho­n­ours for Tevin Pe­ters and Ifill, each earn­ing the dis­tinc­tion three times through­out the tour­na­ment. Christo­pher Ser­rant of UTC claimed the “Top Scor­er” award with four goals, ce­ment­ing his rep­u­ta­tion as one of the tour­na­ment’s elite strik­ers. Oth­er no­table goal scor­ers in­clud­ed Machel In­niss (UTC), Kern Gar­diner (CBTT), and Shaquille Hug­gins (TTMB) with three goals each.

Springer elab­o­rat­ed on Sco­tia­bank’s tac­ti­cal ap­proach: “The first three games start­ed off won­der­ful­ly. How­ev­er, the sun and hu­mid­i­ty re­al­ly took a toll as the day pro­gressed. In the last three group-stage games, we ro­tat­ed our line-up, al­low­ing our main play­ers to rest and giv­ing more play­ing time to those who hadn’t played much ear­li­er. That tac­ti­cal de­ci­sion gave us a stronger team in the semi­fi­nals, and as you saw, we de­liv­ered an ex­cel­lent per­for­mance, con­tin­u­ing strong­ly in­to the fi­nals.”

Now in its 33rd year, the Car­iFin Games have been unit­ing T&T’s fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor through sport since 1992. The foot­ball tour­na­ment rep­re­sents the eighth event in a nine-event cal­en­dar span­ning three months. Points earned here sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact the over­all Car­iFin stand­ings as in­sti­tu­tions vie for the ul­ti­mate cham­pi­on ti­tle.

“Well, be­ing in sec­ond place this year, I just want to take time off to say that we were the 2019 Cham­pi­ons of Car­iFin. And what we learned to­day was it’s just a mat­ter of com­ing to­geth­er as one and be­ing a team — a fam­i­ly,” said An­dre Jack­ie, goal­keep­er for TTMB. “Ac­tu­al­ly, af­ter 2019, be­ing cham­pi­ons in 2019, this was the first time we en­tered the com­pe­ti­tion again. So, I guess be­ing away from the com­pe­ti­tion for so long, we prob­a­bly didn’t come first this time. But we’ll do it again next time.”

Jack­ie high­light­ed a mem­o­rable mo­ment from TTMB’s cam­paign: “I would thank the goal by Shaquille Hug­gins for our team,” and added that the tour­na­ment serves a broad­er pur­pose: “We’re try­ing our best to get more of our co-work­ers to­geth­er — all my co-work­ers — as a fam­i­ly, to bring us to­geth­er, make us stronger. So, at least at the end, we can be cham­pi­ons over­all for the events.”

What makes Sco­tia­bank’s tri­umph even more im­pres­sive is their unique play­ing style through­out the tour­na­ment. While oth­er top teams like CBTT and UTC dom­i­nat­ed with of­fen­sive fire­pow­er (scor­ing 9 and 10 goals, re­spec­tive­ly), Sco­tia­bank re­lied on a team-fo­cused ap­proach. As Springer em­pha­sised: “If I had to choose an un­sung hero, it would def­i­nite­ly be the en­tire team. Every­one played an es­sen­tial role. Ku­dos to each play­er. To­day, even our weak­est link be­came our strongest, and our strongest link sup­port­ed when it count­ed.”

This foot­ball cham­pi­onship vic­to­ry adds cru­cial points to the par­tic­i­pat­ing in­sti­tu­tions’ to­tals in the broad­er Car­iFin Games com­pe­ti­tion, po­ten­tial­ly re­shap­ing the over­all Car­iFin Games leader­board as the se­ries heads in­to its fi­nal event.

Foot­ball re­sults

1 Sco­tia­bank TT

2 T&T Mort­gage Bank

3 Cen­tral Bank of T&T


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