Nigel Si­mon

Sub­sti­tute Key­on Ed­wards taught Di­recTV W Con­nec­tion a les­son in fin­ish­ing as he net­ted his team's on­ly re­al chance, se­cur­ing a 1-0 win for Neal & Massy Cale­do­nia AIA over the six-time cham­pi­on, in their First Cit­i­zens Cup semi­fi­nal match. This was at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, on Fri­day night. With the hard-fought win, Cale­do­nia which came from be­hind to beat T&TEC 2-1 in last year's fi­nal, set up a date with two-time cham­pi­on, De­fence Force, a 2-1 win­ner over St Ann's Rangers, in Fri­day's fi­nal at the same venue from 8 pm.

But while Ja­mal Shabazz-coached Cale­do­nia was the team cel­e­brat­ing at the end of the sec­ond semi­fi­nal, coach Stu­art Charles-Fevri­er's W Con­nec­tion, win­ners in 2001, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 could blame no one but it­self as Jo­evin Jones and Ren­nie Brit­to com­bined to squan­der no few­er than three clear chances for the Savonet­ta Boys. They were made to rue their missed ef­forts when Ed­wards, who re­placed winger Ab­dal­lah Phillips in the 74th minute, was on spot at the far post to tap in a left-sided cross by fel­low sub­sti­tute Den­sil Theobald, who was in­tro­duced for in­jured strik­er Ker­lon Fer­gu­son, four min­utes be­fore the half.

The win was the ide­al ton­ic for Cale­do­nia, the Caribbean Foot­ball Union Club cham­pi­on, which was com­ing off a 2-1 loss on Wednes­day night away to Hon­duran club, CD Marathon in their fi­nal round-robin match, af­ter suf­fer­ing de­feats in four of its first five com­pet­i­tive match­es this sea­son. On the oth­er hand, W Con­nec­tion, which drew 1-1 with Mex­i­co's Chivas De Guadala­jara in its fi­nal match on Wednes­day night in Group Eight at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va, now turns its at­ten­tion to the start of the Dig­i­cel T&T Pro League ti­tle de­fence ver­sus new­com­er Cen­tral FC on Tues­day at the same Cou­va venue from 6 pm.

In the night's first semi­fi­nal, all three goals came in the sec­ond-half as ten-man De­fence Force re­peat­ed its 2-1 league tri­umph over Rangers at the same venue, two weeks ago for a chance at a third lien on the Cup and first since 2009. Like W Con­nec­tion, the St Ann's-based club had on­ly it­self to blame for the loss as it wast­ed a num­ber of clear-cut chances in the first 45 min­utes which some­how end­ed 0-0 af­ter Hec­tor Sam, Mikhail Awai and An­drew Smith each came close to an open­er in the first 30 min­utes.

There was still time for Rangers to cre­ate an­oth­er goalscor­ing chance be­fore the whis­tle. This time, na­tion­al Un­der-23 strik­er Cameron Ro­get was the cul­prit as he fired straight at De­fence Force de­fend­er, cap­tain Corey Rivers, on the goalline af­ter Gra­ham was beat­en by a De­von Mod­este cen­tre. At the start of the sec­ond-half, De­fence Force be­gan to see more of ball and al­so wast­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to take the lead in the 54th minute when Ross Rus­sell Jr, the son of coach Ross Rus­sell, robbed Rangers' Chris­ton Thomas of the ball and bore down on goal, on­ly to fire wide of the goal guard­ed by goal­keep­er Zane Cok­er while at the oth­er end of the field, Mar­cano al­so hit wide of the tar­get af­ter steal­ing the ball from Rodell El­cock.

Rangers was then hand­ed a man ad­van­tage on the hour mark when El­cock was shown his sec­ond yel­low-card for a foul on Ja­mal Jack, who was in the process of mount­ing a coun­ter­at­tack for his team. How­ev­er, de­spite be­ing down to ten men, De­fence Force took the lead sev­en min­utes lat­er when Jer­wyn Balt­haz­ar was on spot to hit home past Cok­er on the sec­ond at­tempt. This af­ter an un­marked De­vorn Jorsling ran on­to Balt­haz­ar's pass be­tween the Rangers de­fence, but saw his ef­fort ric­o­cheted in­to his team­mate's path. He laid it back to Jorsling, who was stopped by Cok­er, on­ly for the ball to drop to Balt­haz­ar, who this time fired in­to a gap­ing goal for a 1-0 cush­ion and 11 min­utes lat­er Richard Roy squared for the speedy Kevon Carter to dou­ble his team's lead.

But sev­en min­utes be­fore the end of reg­u­la­tion time, Rangers won a penal­ty when ref­er­ee Gyasi Mc­Don­ald whis­tled for a han­dled ball on Mar­vin Jones off a shot by sub­sti­tute Nico­las Castel­lanos in­side the 18-yard box. Mod­este stepped up and eas­i­ly con­vert­ed, how­ev­er it was too late as De­fence Force earned a spot in Fri­day's fi­nal, its sixth in tour­na­ment his­to­ry. The win­ner of Fri­day's fi­nal will col­lect an $80,000 while the run­ner-up gets $20,000. In ad­di­tion, to the team prizes in the fi­nal, the tour­na­ment's top­scor­er and "Most Valu­able Play­er" will each col­lect $1,000, the "MVP" of gets $500 and the "Dash for Cash" win­ner, $1,000.

Re­sults: D/Force 2 (Jer­wyn Balt­haz­ar 67th, Kevon Carter 78th) vs St Ann's Rangers 1 (De­von Mod­este 83rd pen) Cale­do­nia 1 (Key­on Ed­wards 89th) vs W Con­nec­tion 0