An­drew Gioan­net­ti

A dis­putable own goal from re­li­able St Mary's Col­lege goal­keep­er Chris­t­ian At­tong mo­ments left in reg­u­la­tion time, de­ter­mined the out­come of what was an even­ly con­test­ed BGTT First Cit­i­zens Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League Big-Five fi­nal, which went in the way of a 2-1 vic­to­ry for Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege of San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day.

The Li­ons of South, which lost the Big-Five fi­nal last year, made their ef­forts count on this oc­ca­sion but it came to the de­spair of St Mary's Col­lege, which saw four mem­bers of its coach­ing and man­age­r­i­al staff sent off for protest­ing what looked like a ghost goal.

The sec­ond match of a dou­ble-head­er at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va, fol­lowed a less in­tense but classy 1-0 win for St Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary over Bish­op's High of To­ba­go, through a goal from Naiomee Guer­ra.

The sec­ond match, which too was of high qual­i­ty for the most part, closed in less de­sir­able fash­ion.

The Saints cus­to­di­an, At­tong, whose han­dling of the ball had been al­most flaw­less through­out the course of the match, was on the re­ceiv­ing end of a barge by Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege of San Fer­nan­do for­ward Shack­iel Hen­ry close to the goal-line, with rough­ly five min­utes re­main­ing in the fix­ture, and while no ap­peals were seen from the Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege play­ers for a goal as At­tong seemed to be on his line, the ref­er­ee took a look across to his as­sis­tant, who in­stead of award­ing At­tong a foul, judged the event as an own-goal.

The match took a halt as of­fi­cials of St Mary's Col­lege protest­ed in uni­son, ques­tion­ing both the ref­er­ee and his as­sis­tant. They, in­clud­ing a fu­ri­ous head coach Ja­son Ed­wards and as­sis­tant Ryan Shim, were sent to the stands.

The end of the fix­ture brought ju­bi­la­tion to the hun­dreds of Pre­sen­ta­tion sup­port­ers, but it al­so brought a flock of play­ers and foot­ball staff of St Mary's to the faces of the ref­er­ees, prompt­ing po­lice ac­tion. One po­lice of­fi­cer pulled out a ba­ton, while a St Mary's play­er ques­tioned the of­fi­cial.

The sour in­ci­dent did in­jus­tice to what was a keen con­test played be­tween the two schools. Nei­ther team out­classed the oth­er. Even as Pre­sen­ta­tion opened the scor­ing with a de­served goal in the 47th minute from a head­ed ef­fort by Jared Gor­don from close range, St Mary's nev­er lost con­fi­dence.

The Saints re­spond­ed in the 58th minute from a penal­ty from Rashad Hy­acinth, af­ter Pres de­fend­er Ma­keem Hug­gins clat­tered in­to Chin­ua Bernard, whose back was turned to goal.

"Pres" en­joyed bet­ter pos­ses­sion dur­ing some spells of the first half, but its most in­flu­en­tial play­ers in­clud­ing Hen­ry and mid­field­er An­gel Williams, were not as ef­fec­tive as they have been through­out the sea­son.

St Mary's had the ear­li­est op­por­tu­ni­ty to take the lead in the 11th minute when Bernard con­nect­ed with a Se­bastien Cabral head­ed pass but the strik­er's vol­ley in the box edged above the cross­bar. How­ev­er, in the 27th minute, Pre­sen­ta­tion came even clos­er to a goal, when a shot from the edge of the penal­ty box from Yohance Alexan­der rocked the cross­bar, be­fore At­tong held on­to the re­bound.

Pre­sen­ta­tion had an­oth­er sight on goal with an ef­fort from Jared Gor­don with 10 min­utes left in the first half, but the mid­field­er's shot was soft­ened by Saints cap­tain Myles Yorke, who bril­liant­ly mar­shalled his de­fense through­out the en­counter.

The sec­ond half brought more dar­ing ef­forts from both sides, which had to set­tle on a thick sta­di­um sur­face. The ball moved slow­ly and play­ers from both teams had to play more aer­i­al balls to cre­ate chances.

The open­ing two goals came from set plays, and the fi­nal goal, from a di­rect cross, which seemed to be safe­ly han­dled by At­tong. The Saints at­tempt­ed to push for­ward once again, fol­low­ing the con­tro­ver­sial in­ci­dent, but it was Pre­sen­ta­tion's day. The team won its first na­tion­al league ti­tle, while CIC's drought for the same tro­phy will ex­tend to 23 years.

It is the sec­ond Big-Five match which has stirred con­tro­ver­sy. Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, was not sup­posed to play Cara­pichaima East in the semi­fi­nal which it won 3-0. The Cen­tral Zone league ti­tle was won by Ch­agua­nas North Sec­ondary, which re­ceived a let­ter the day be­fore the Big Five semi­fi­nal stat­ing that it was de­duct­ed nine points for the al­leged field­ing of in­el­i­gi­ble play­ers.

How­ev­er, the let­ter was sent by the cre­den­tials com­mit­tee, which does not have the ju­ris­dic­tion to make a judg­ment. The dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee is the body re­quired to make such a judg­ment. The SS­FL lat­er ac­knowl­edged its er­ror.