Nigel Si­mon

Con­rod Smith came off the bench to bang home the win­ner as ten-man bmo­bile Joe Pub­lic came from the brink of de­feat to edge W Con­nec­tion 3-2 in the T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion FA Tro­phy fi­nal at the Mar­vin Lee Sta­di­um, Ma­coya. With the win, their first in three at­tempts against W Con­nec­tion in the FA fi­nal, the Ker­ry Bap­tiste-led East­ern Li­ons added to their pre­vi­ous wins in 2001 and 2007 while cop­ping their fourth ti­tle from six com­pe­ti­tions this sea­son. In ad­di­tion to the FA Tro­phy, Joe Pub­lic coach Derek King and his play­ers col­lect­ed the $80,000 first prize and 25 gold medals to add to the Dig­i­cel Pro League, "Big Six" and Toy­ota Clas­sic ti­tles.

On the oth­er hand, three-time FA win­ners W Con­nec­tion (1999, 2000 and 2002) and six-time fi­nal­ist got $40,000 and 25 sil­ver medals for sec­ond spot while los­ing semi­fi­nal­ist, Unit­ed Petrotrin and Cale­do­nia, each got $15,000. Watched by a par­ti­san crowd which in­clud­ed club own­er and Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er, Joe Pub­lic took on­ly 14 min­utes to go 1-0 ahead, when Bap­tiste spec­tac­u­lar­ly volleyed home a right sided cross from Ka­reem Young past goal­keep­er Jan-Michael Williams for his 48th goal of the do­mes­tic sea­son. Af­ter a pe­ri­od of even ex­changes, punc­tu­at­ed by some crunch­ing tack­les, W Con­nec­tion drew lev­el in the 36th minute when Joe Pub­lic goal­keep­er Ale­jan­dro Figueroa failed to col­lect a Matthew Bartholomew shot and Clyde Leon tapped home for a 1-1 score­line. Three min­utes lat­er, Joe Pub­lic was re­duced to ten men af­ter na­tion­al Un­der-20 mid­field­er Jean-Luc Rochford was shown the red card by ref­er­ee Neil Brizan for re­tal­i­a­tion af­ter he was fouled by W Con­nec­tion de­fend­er, Ed­er Arias.

De­spite the ad­van­tage, W Con­nec­tion failed to press home their brief pe­ri­od of dom­i­nance as both teams end­ed the half, 1-1. The "Savonet­ta Boys" be­gan the sec­ond-half the bet­ter of both teams with half-time in­tro­duc­tion, Jose Luis Seabra and Bartholomew both test­ing Figueroa with long range ef­forts. Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic strik­er Jonathan Frias then came close to giv­ing W Con­nec­tion the lead in the 65th minute when he turned de­fend­er Car­lyle Mitchell and ri­fled a right foot­er on goal which skimmed the cross-bar. Ten min­utes be­fore the fi­nal whis­tle W Con­nec­tion fi­nal­ly went ahead when a Jo­evin Jones pin-point left sided cen­tre was met with a pow­er­ful div­ing head­er from Bartholomew that gave Figueroa no chance. King then in­tro­duced his last sub­sti­tute in Gore­an High­ley for Young, and the nip­py left foot­er re­spond­ed to the call by cre­at­ing his team's equalis­er, from a left sided cen­tre which was turned in­to his own goal by a div­ing Arias to send the match in­to 30 min­utes of ex­tra-time.

And with on­ly three min­utes of the ex­tra-time pe­ri­od re­main­ing and penal­ty-kicks loom­ing, Smith, who won the FA Tro­phy with Cale­do­nia came up big for his new em­ploy­ers. Af­ter a raid by W Con­nec­tion was bro­ken up, Trent Noel start­ed a counter-at­tack for Joe Pub­lic and fed Smith who raced goal­wards with three de­fend­ers in his path. With no team-mate in sight, Smith tried his luck on goal from the edge of the box but was blocked out by de­fend­er Eli­jah Joseph. How­ev­er, the de­ter­mine Smith, who up to that point had done lit­tle to im­press coach King quick­ly rose to his feet and with­out hes­i­ta­tion blast­ed a right foot­ed shot which sneaked in­to the bot­tom right hand cor­ner of the goal, past the des­per­ate dive of Williams for a 3-2 lead which his team-mates de­fend­ed un­til the fi­nal whis­tle.

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Teams:

Joe Pub­lic: Ale­jan­dro Figueroa(GK), Ker­ry Bap­tiste(capt.), Car­lyle Mitchell, Seon Pow­er, Keion Goodridge, Ka­reem Young (Gore­an High­ley 83rd), Jean-Luc Rochford, Yu Hoshide (De­von Lea­cock 66th), Trent Noel, Mic­ah Lewis (Con­rod Smith 60th), Hay­den Tin­to.

Coach: Derek King

W Con­nec­tion: Jan-Michael Williams (GK), Eli­jah Joseph(capt.), Hughton Hec­tor, Ed­er Gilmar Arias, Clyde Leon, Jonathon Frias (Ig­or San­tos 96th), Nick­col­son Thomas, Matthew Bartholomew (An­drei Pacheco 86th), Chris­t­ian Viveros, Jo­evin Jones, Ger­rard Williams.

Coach: Stu­art Charles Fevri­er

Wednes­day's FA Tro­phy semi­fi­nal re­sults:

Venue: Mar­vin Lee Sta­di­um, Ma­coya.

Joe Pub­lic 3 (Ker­ry Bap­tiste 14th, Ed­er Arias 89th o.g, Con­rod Smith 117th) vs W Con­nec­tion 2 (Clyde Leon 36th, Matthew Bartholomew 80th).