Hail Na­pari­ma Col­lege, cham­pi­ons of the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion of the Shell/First Cit­i­zens 2018 Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League, a ti­tle the south­ern­ers won af­ter beat­ing Trin­i­ty Mo­ka 2-0 at Mar­aval yes­ter­day, while fel­low south­ern­ers Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons, was held 1-1 by San Juan in Bourg Mu­la­tresse, San Juan.

Need­ing a vic­to­ry to as­sure them a re­peat of the ti­tle won last year, Pre­sen­ta­tion start­ed firey at San Juan but could not get past a steady Em­manuel John in goal. Af­ter 16th min­utes of play Aleem Bar­clay was set free but his blis­ter­ing dri­ve from just in­side the area was ac­ro­bat­i­cal­ly pushed wide by John, who won thun­der­ous ap­plause from the hun­dreds of fans that gath­ered at the venue.

And lat­er on, John again sprang in­to ac­tion to pre­vent at­tempts by Jor­dan Ri­ley, Ac­k­eel Ja­cob and com­pa­ny from break­ing the dead­lock.

The teams went in­to the half-time in­ter­val knot­ted at 0-0, but on the re­sump­tion the play­ers from both teams pro­duced fire­works for the crowd that packed the venue. The home team came to life when Isa­iah Chase found him­self at the end of a loose ball that bounced nice­ly for him from an ear­li­er at­tack, and with Pre­sen­ta­tion goalie Jabari Gray blind­ed in the midst of a crowd­ed de­fence, Chase lashed pow­er­ful­ly in­side the far post that gave Gray no chance as he looked on help­less­ly in the 59th minute.

The goal brought life and hope for a team that need­ed to win the en­counter by six clear goals and while de­pend­ing on Trin­i­ty Mo­ka to beat Na­pari­ma Col­lege, for its chance to claim the ti­tle. But Jardel St Clair spoiled it for host when he took down a left-side cross nice­ly in­side the box, and calm­ly slot­ted the ball past the ad­vanc­ing John for the equalis­er in the 83rd minute and from then on Pre­sen­ta­tion pressed on for sev­en min­utes to man­u­fac­ture the win­ner which nev­er came.

In Mar­aval, Na­pari­ma made sure of all three points and with San Juan's help, cel­e­brat­ed the cham­pi­onship. But be­fore that Nathaniel Per­ouse fired the vis­i­tors in­to the lead in the 25th minute. And with Trin­i­ty Mo­ka bat­tling to im­prove their po­si­tion on the stand­ings, Jeron Pan­tor sealed the win in the 60th minute to spark wild cel­e­bra­tions among his team­mates and sup­port­ers up­on learn­ing about the Bourg Mu­la­tresse re­sult.

Coach An­gus Eve said he was hum­bled by the win, and ded­i­cat­ed it to all those who played in­stru­men­tal roles in sup­port­ing the team, such as the teach­ers and oth­er staff mem­bers, the old boys and par­tic­u­lar­ly the play­ers who have played un­beat­en all sea­son.

"We knew the pres­sure was on Pre­sen­ta­tion, as we knew that hav­ing played against San Juan in Bourg Mu­la­tresse, it was al­ways go­ing to be dif­fi­cult to beat them. Hav­ing said that, We knew al­so that Trin­i­ty Mo­ka was no pushover ei­ther, so we had to do our part and win," Eve ex­plained.

"All prais­es and glo­ry to Almighty God, with­out whom we could not have achieved this. We will now turn our fo­cus on the In­ter­Col, which is a knock-out tour­na­ment and will be no easy one to win," Eve said.

Mean­while, St Mary's Col­lege al­so sur­vived rel­e­ga­tion by de­feat­ing Trin­i­ty East 4-2 at home in St Clair. The 'Saints' as the school is called, need­ed just a draw to avoid go­ing down, but the team got more than it bar­gained for with a dou­ble from Kyle Car­ring­ton, who scored in the 50th and 59th min­utes, as well as goals from Michel Poon-Angeron and Tyrese Spicer, to se­cure all three points and a com­fort­able 4-2 vic­to­ry in the end.

East­ern­ers Va­len­cia, the on­ly team to con­firm St Mary's rel­e­ga­tion need­ed to beat Fa­ti­ma by 11 goals. But the team failed to achieve its ob­jec­tive as Fa­ti­ma won 3-2. The re­sult meant Va­len­cia, Bish­op's To­ba­go and Fa­ti­ma have been de­mot­ed to the Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion for the 2019 sea­son.

RE­SULTS

QRC 1 vs Cara­pichaima 1

Va­len­cia 2 (Dwight Yorke 33rd, 79th) vs Fa­ti­ma 3 (Mikhail Mc Com­mie 2nd, Luke Dar­went 52nd, 53rd)

St Mary's 4 (Michel Poon-Angeron 7th, Kyle Car­ring­ton 50th, 59th) vs Trin­i­ty East 2 (J Mc Kree 9th, 20th)

East Mu­cu­rapo 2 (Daniel David 4th, Malachai 61st) vs St An­tho­ny's 0

San Juan 1 (Isa­iah Chase 59th) vs Pre­sen­ta­tion 1 (Jardel St Clair)

Na­pari­ma 2 (Nathaniel Per­ouse 25th, Jeron Pan­tor) vs Trin­i­ty Mo­ka 0

2018 Fi­nal Pre­mier Di­vi­sion Stand­ing

Pos*TEAM*P*W*D*L*F*A*GD*Pts

1*Na­pari­ma*14*10*4*0*27*9*18*34

2*Pre­sen­ta­tion*14*10*3*2*31*13*18*33

3*San Juan*14*9*3*2*26*16*10*30

4*Cara­pichaima*14*7*3*4*25*22*3*24

5*St Bene­dict's*14*6*3*5*22*21*1*21

6*QRC*14*5*5*4*19*12*7*20

7*Mu­cu­rapo*14*6*2*6*24*21*3*20

8*Trin­i­ty Mo­ka*14*5*4*5*21*31*-10*19

9*St Mary's*14*5*2*7*27*23*4*17

10*St Au­gus­tine*14*5*2*7*25*28*-3*17

11*Trin­i­ty East*14*3*7*4*15*15*0*16

12*St An­tho­ny's*14*4*3*7*22*25*-3*15

13*Va­len­cia*14*3*3*8*21*31*-10*12

14*Fa­ti­ma*14*3*2*9*14*23*-9*11

15*Bish­op's To­ba­go*14*0*2*12*12*41*-29*2