WAL­TER AL­IBEY

“It will be quite sim­ple to­day, just go out there and win” Shel­don Ma­haraj, the Shi­va Boys Hin­du Col­lege man­ag­er said yes­ter­day ahead of to­day’s open­ing clash with arch ri­vals Na­pari­ma Col­lege from 5pm at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main Cou­va.

His con­fi­dence is not on­ly be­cause they de­feat­ed Naps for the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion’s South Zone League ti­tle last year, but rather be­cause they will be field­ing ba­si­cal­ly their same team from last year, hav­ing lost just two play­ers in de­fend­ers Shaquille Williams and Jerome Samuel. “The core of our team is still there which means we still have our a pow­er­ful team. We are aware of Na­pari­ma and what they have to of­fer but we are the south cham­pi­ons, and while we will re­spect them, like we will give any oth­er team, we are go­ing out to start with a vic­to­ry” Ma­haraj ex­plained.

The game will be the fea­ture match of a dou­ble head­er at the Cou­va venue, and will fol­low a 3pm match-up be­tween Cara­pichaima East Sec­ondary and Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, which were spared rel­e­ga­tion to the Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion based on a tech­ni­cal­i­ty.

Shi­va coach Hay­don Ryan has beefed up his team by re­cruit­ing mid­field­er Jude Phillips from Pleas­antville Sec­ondary and at­tack­ing mid­field­er Kier­ron Ma­son from Na­pari­ma, and have been hard in train­ing for the past two months in prepa­ra­tion for a an even more dif­fi­cult sea­son than last year. Ma­haraj said both Phillips and Ma­son are like­ly to be on the start­ing team to­day, but he will be look­ing for­ward for a good over­all per­for­mance from the team.

Ac­tion in the league will be­gin of­fi­cial­ly to­mor­row (Sat­ur­day) with match­es in the dif­fer­ent zones across T&T, but Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion match­es will kick-off next Fri­day.

TO­DAY’S MATCH­ES

Cara­pichaima East v Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, 3pm, Ato Boldon Sta­di­um

Shi­va Boys HC v Na­pari­ma Col­lege, 5pm, Ato Boldon Sta­di­um

SAT­UR­DAY’S MATCH­ES

St Bene­dict’s Col­lege VS St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege- 3:40pm- Debe

Spey­side High VS QRC- 3:40pm- Spey­side

St Mary’s Col­lege VS St Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary- 3:40pm- St Mary’s Ground

Fyz­abad Sec­ondary VS Trin­i­ty Col­lege Mo­ka - 3:40pm- Fyz­abad

Trin­i­ty Col­lege East VS Sig­nal Hill- 3:40pm- Trinci­ty

Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege (S’F’do) VS San Juan North Sec­ondary- 3:40pm- Guaracara Park