Af­ter a nervy start, T&T's Un­der-23 Olympic foot­ballers ral­lied from a goal down to de­feat Guyana's "Gold­en Jaguars" 3-1 in a warm up fix­ture at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um, in Ba­co­let, To­ba­go, on Thurs­day evening. T&T went in­to the dress­ing room a goal down, but re­turned in the sec­ond half to score three unan­swered goals to even­tu­al­ly take a com­fort­able win. It was Wal­ter Moore, who start­ed for Guyana in its fa­mous 2-1 win against the "So­ca War­riors" that knocked the lat­ter team out of World Cup con­tention in the Con­ca­caf Group B Sec­ond Round, last No­vem­ber, that took the lead in the 22nd minute from the penal­ty spot. Guyana con­tin­ued to prove the mar­gin­al­ly stronger team in the first half, but suf­fered at the feet of its biggest re­gion­al ri­val in the sec­ond half as- Ja­mal Gay (49th), Trevin Cae­sar (61st) and US based sub­sti­tute Bradley Welch (77th) all found the back of the net to earn T&T a de­served vic­to­ry.

T&T had its chances to find a goal in the first half with Cae­sar most no­tably hand­ed the clear­er of the op­por­tu­ni­ties. With a quar­ter of an hour on the clock the To­ba­go-born Cae­sar could have giv­en T&T the 1-0 lead af­ter drib­bling past a cou­ple de­fend­ers, but his shot was wide of the tar­get. Guyana al­so had its chances, even be­fore the open­er, as at­tack­er Kester Ja­cobs fired just high of the cross­bar. Goal­keep­er Zane Cok­er, Nu­ru Mo­hammed and Mic­ah Lewis were some of the play­ers who were giv­en the nod in the star­ing line-up. Sport­ing Kansas de­fend­er Daneil Cyrus was al­so giv­en a start af­ter be­ing side­lined with in­jury for the greater part of a year. T&T's team was miss­ing some of its reg­u­lars in­clud­ing Jo­evin Jones and Sean De Sil­va, but was oth­er­wise able to con­tain Guyana's at­tack through­out the match, oth­er than for the first half penal­ty. The "Gold­en Jaguars" which are prepar­ing for a tough round of fix­tures in the next round of World Cup qual­i­fiers were al­so with­out some of its key play­ers, but did fea­ture Moore and An­tho­ny Ban­field, both of whom played in the last two match­es against T&T late last year.

W Con­nec­tion pair An­dre Quashie and Jo­mal Williams came on for T&T at the start of the sec­ond half and were in­volved in the con­struc­tion of T&T's promis­ing at­tacks. The home team found the equal­iz­er with just over three min­utes gone in the sec­ond half, when a Gay fin­ished clin­i­cal­ly af­ter a scram­ble of Guyanese play­ers in the box failed to clear. T&T's sec­ond goal came just af­ter the hour mark from Cae­sar, who lift­ed his home­town sup­port. His pow­er­ful fin­ish which fol­lowed en­ter­pris­ing pass­es, al­so im­pact­ed on the mo­men­tum of the team which grew as the game pro­ceed­ed. Cae­sar al­most found his sec­ond a minute lat­er, but Guyana's 'keep­er Ron­son Williams was alert and well pre­pared for the at­tack. Williams was help­less for T&T's third when Welch, struck the ball from a dis­tance in­to the back of the net in the 77th minute, to the de­light of coach An­gus Eve and as­sis­tant Derek King.

Teams

T&T: Zane Cok­er, Daneil Cyrus (Ziko De­noon 79'), Shel­don Bateau, Jayson Joseph, Aquil Sel­by, Nu­ru Mo­hammed, Mic­ah Lewis (An­dre Quashie 46'), Jeromie Williams (Cameron Roger 71'), Ja­mal Gay (Bradley Welch 65'), Mar­cus Joseph (Jo­mal Williams 46'), Trevin Cae­sar. Guyana: Ron­son Williams, Jar­mane Gran­di­son, Wal­ter Moore, Col­in Nel­son, Kester Ja­cobs, De­von Milling­ton, An­drew Mur­ray, Tray­on Bobb, An­tho­ny Ben­field, Kona­ta Man­nings, An­tho­ny Abrams.