Cen­tral FC picked up from where it left off last sea­son as de­fend­er An­dre Et­ti­enne re­ward­ed his new em­ploy­ers with a match-win­ning goal in a 1-0 win to de­throne three-time hold­ers W Con­nec­tion to lift the 2015/2016 sea­son open­er, Dig­i­cel Char­i­ty Shield at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va on Fri­day night.

The win hand­ed Cen­tral, last sea­son's sev­en-ti­tle win­ners, their first ever Char­i­ty Shield af­ter com­ing up short in the en­counter against the same op­po­nents last year, by the same 1-0 mar­gin.It was al­so ret­ri­bu­tion for new Cen­tral FC coach Ross Rus­sell, who was on the los­ing end as De­fence Force coach, 2-0 and 4-2 in the 2012 and 2013 Char­i­ty Shield, re­spec­tive­ly.

W Con­nec­tion, who had two de­cent at­tempts in the open­ing mo­ments, had an ex­cel­lent op­por­tu­ni­ty to take the lead in the 24th minute af­ter mid­field­er Jo­mal Williams was tripped in the Cen­tr�al box by Kay­dion Gabriel, forc­ing match ref­er­ee Rod­phin Har­ris to point to the spot, how­ev­er de­fend­er and cap­tain Alvin Jones struck over from the penal­ty spot, fail­ing to trou­ble Cen­tral goal­keep­er Jan-Michael Williams,

Then Plaza, set free be­hind the de­fence by a clas­sic Mar­vin Oliv­er pass, wast­ed his strike in the 34th minute with Archibald at his mer­cy as he fired straight at the W Con­nec­tion and St Kitts/Nevis in­ter­na­tion­al be­fore team­mate Joseph rat­tled the up­right from dis­tance a minute lat­er.Just be­fore the in­ter­val, W Con­nec­tion al­most took the lead, but with Williams beat­en, de­fend­er Kay­di­en Gabriel was on spot to make a goal line clearence.

On the re­sump­tion both teams strug­gled to gain the up­per hand un­til Cen­tral FC took the lead in the 69th minute with what turned out to be the de­ci­sive item from an un­like­ly source.The 25-year-old Et­ti­enne took time in set­tling him­self be­fore spank­ing a low strike from the top of a crowd­ed 18-yard box to find Archibald's bot­tom right cor­ner fol­low­ing a right side cor­ner swung in by sub­sti­tute Ja­son Mar­cano.

Speak­ing af­ter the match a de­light­ed Rus­sell said, "I feel ho­n­oured. I made it to the Char­i­ty Shield twice be­fore and lost. Now I have won it over the same club that beat me twice. I am con­fi­dent now to go for­ward and do my job."I've adopt­ed a win­ning team that won four ma­jor ti­tles last sea­son but lost this one. Now it's good that the play­ers came back this sea­son to win it."

Rus­sell al­so made it in­to the his­to­ry books of Cen­tral FC by kick­ing off his tenure with a ti­tle in his very first do­mes­tic match as coach of the "Cou­va Sharks" while be­com­ing the on­ly coach to avoid de­feat in his first "Cou­va Cla­si­co" against ri­val club W Con­nec­tion � some­thing pre­vi­ous Cen­tral FC coach­es Gra­ham Rix, Ter­ry Fen­wick and Zo­ran Vranes were un­able to achieve. Fen­wick and Vranes were present at the Cou­va venue and wit­nessed Rus­sell's win.

Cen­tral won four ma­jor ti­tles (First Cit­i­zens Cup, Dig­i­cel Pro League, Caribbean Club Cham­pi­onship and Dig­i­cel Pro Bowl) and the Rawle Fletch­er, Akeem Adams and Kevon Carter tro­phies for win­ning each round of the league and now their ti­tle ways have rolled over on the do­mes­tic front at the start of the 2015/2016 sea­son.

With re­gards to his new sign­ing Et­ti­enne, Rus­sell: "Since he ar­rived at the club he has been bril­liant. He is a great strik­er of the ball and tonight he had a go at it and he scored. I am very hap­py for him. He got 'Most Valu­able Play­er' of the match and it's an­oth­er good boost on his head. A new boy com­ing to the club and he is al­ready win­ning stuff."

Cen­tral and W Con­nec­tion will re­fo­cus on the for their sec­ond leg match­es of the 2015/2016 Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons League be­fore the start of the 2015/2016 Dig­i­cel Pro League lat­er this month.

W Con­nec­tion will tack­le Sapris­sa of Cos­ta Ri­ca on Wednes­day be­fore wrap­ping up their Group A fix­tures against Mex­i­co's San­tos La­gu­na on Sep­tem­ber 22 while Cen­tral must host Guatemala's Co­mu­ni­ca­ciones on Thurs­day then LA Galaxy of the USA Sep­tem­ber 23 to com­plete their Group D fix­tures. All match­es are host­ed at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo.