Clay­ton Clarke

T&T's So­ca War­riors ad­vanced to next month's Caribbean Cup fi­nals with­out kick­ing a ball, af­ter the first match of the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um, Ba­co­let, dou­ble-head­er, yes­ter­day re­sult­ed in a 1-0 vic­to­ry for Suri­name over St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

De­spite the win, which came as a re­sult of a con­vert­ed penal­ty from Suri­name's cap­tain and cus­to­di­an Ron­ny Aloe­ma in the lat­ter stages of the first half, nei­ther team was able to ad­vance, leav­ing the oth­er two teams in its group T&T and Cu­ba to scrap for top spot in the night's sec­ond match, de­spite both teams pro­gress­ing. T&T lost 1-0 to Cu­ba, who topped the group with T&T fin­ish­ing sec­ond.

Cu­ba's goal came in the 28th minute through Ar­tu­lo Guer­ra.

It was on­ly a mat­ter of con­so­la­tion for Suri­name which lost its first two match­es to Cu­ba (5-0) and T&T (3-0). The Vin­cen­tians, how­ev­er, were still in con­tention for a spot in Caribbean Cup, but failed to live up to the hype it cre­at­ed af­ter hold­ing Cu­ba and T&T to draws.

The on­ly goal in the match came as a re­sult of the spot kick which was award­ed for a foul on Joel Pinas in penal­ty area. Aloe­ma slot­ted home a left foot­ed ef­fort to the right side of the goal to beat the Vin­cent­ian goal­keep­er Kenyan Lynch who went the oth­er way.

St Vin­cent start­ed bright­ly, with its strik­ing duo of My­ron Samuel and the T&T Pro League based Cor­nelius Stew­art mak­ing their in­ten­tions clear as Suri­name failed to con­tain the speedy runs on the left side flank.

It was Suri­name, how­ev­er, which had a strong case for an open­er in the 21st minute, when Gio­van­ni Dren­the took a shot which was par­ried over by Lynch. He was sent through by Wil­frid Gal­imo, who led the at­tack for Suri­name.

On the oth­er end, Samuel and for­ward Wen­dell Cuffy pushed for SVG and the lat­ter al­most gave his team a de­served lead 31st minute, had Aloe­ma not been equal to his pow­er­ful strike. Waal al­most dou­bled the lead in the 44th min­utes when he latched on to a cross but col­lid­ed with keep­er Lynch.

Suri­name came out of the lock­ers look­ing the more de­ter­mined team as Dren­the's left foot shot in the 48th minute was wide of the goal. Stew­art re­spond­ed for St Vin­cent as he sped down the left hand side but was charged for a push­ing on the goal line. Suri­name pushed for a sec­ond as Gal­imo Pinas pressed the St Vin­cent's de­fence.

The Vin­cent­ian back line was not a for­mi­da­ble as in their draws against Trinidad and To­ba­go and Cu­ba and was with­out Wes­ley Charles who was in­jured in the one all draw against T&T on Wednes­day.

St Vin­cent made changes in pur­suit of a win­ner. Ro­mano Snag­gs re­placed Cuffy but when a limp­ing Stew­art was re­placed in the 69th minute, St Vin­cent's chance of scor­ing look­ing dim.

Suri­name's win meant that Trinidad and To­ba­go and Cu­ba qual­i­fied for the Caribbean Cup Fi­nals even be­fore the two teams clashed in the sec­ond match.