Vet­er­an mid­field­er Mar­vin Oliv­er was the toast of Cen­tral FC af­ter his sec­ond-half head­er earned the Cou­va-based club a 1-0 win over T&TEC in an all-Dig­i­cel T&T Pro League FA Tro­phy semi­fi­nal at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va, on Wednes­day.

Cen­tral FC, fea­tur­ing new sign­ings An­tiguan Pe­ter By­ers, Ja­son Mar­cano and Wes­lie John, start­ed the brighter and should have gone ahead af­ter six min­utes.

How­ev­er, Mar­cano's dan­ger­ous free kick to the far post was missed by two of his lung­ing team­mates and five min­utes lat­er the nip­py at­tack­er sent in an­oth­er cross which John di­rect­ed straight at goal­keep­er Aki­ni Adams.

T&TEC cap­tain Keeron Ben­i­to had his team's first re­al ef­fort on goal when he test­ed goal­keep­er Mar­vin Phillip in the 17th minute and soon af­ter at the oth­er end, Adams was forced in­to more ac­tion when he de­nied a long-dis­tance blast from for­mer Puer­to Ri­co Is­landers strik­er Justin Fo­jo to keep the score goal­less.

And when the Cen­tral FC at­tack did man­age to get past Adams, it was de­nied by the wood­work as was the case in the 22nd minute when By­ers passed to Mar­cano on­ly to see the ef­fort whisk past the T&TEC cus­to­di­an but canon off the cross­bar.

De­spite their lack of for­tune, Cen­tral con­tin­ued to push for the open­er with Oliv­er hit­ting over­bar in the 35th minute as both teams went in­to the break still in search of the open­er.

Sev­en min­utes af­ter the restart, na­tion­al un­der-20 strik­er and Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege of San Fer­nan­do strik­er Shack­eil Hen­ry picked out an un­marked T&TEC's Sylvester Tees­dale in the Cen­tral FC 18-yard box, but he fired straight at Phillip, who tipped over for a cor­ner. How­ev­er, with the min­utes run­ning down, Oliv­er, a for­mer FA win­ner with Fen­wick at Jabloteh, head­ed in the de­ci­sive item in 76th minute off a well-placed Mar­cano cross at the far post for Cen­tral's win­ning item.

It was the sec­ond win of the sea­son for Cen­tral FC over T&TEC, hav­ing won their lone Pro League 2-1 with Ty­rone Charles and An­tho­ny Wolfe scor­ing sec­ond-half goals to can­cel out Ben­i­to's first-half strike.

In the fi­nal on March 1, Cen­tral FC will come up against the win­ner of Wednes­day's oth­er semi­fi­nal be­tween 2003 win­ner and two-time hold­er and reign­ing cham­pi­on Neal & Massy Cale­do­nia AIA.

This, af­ter the de­plet­ed Cale­do­nia mi­nus no few­er than nine first team reg­u­lars who have all gone on tri­als ei­ther in Eu­rope or USA eked out a 1-0 win over host Stoke­ly Vale of the Na­tion­al Su­per League at the Ply­mouth Recre­ation Ground, Ply­mouth.

Lanky mid­field­er Shel­don Hold­er was the scor­er for the Jer­ry Moe-coached Mor­vant/Laven­tille-based "Stal­lions." The re­sult avenged a 6-5 sud­den-death penal­ty-kicks loss in the round-of-16 of the Toy­ota Clas­sic last No­vem­ber.

The meet­ing be­tween Cale­do­nia and Stoke­ly Vale was ini­tial­ly set for the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, a week ear­li­er but was called off due to a no-show of of­fi­cials.

In last week's quar­ter­fi­nals, Stars se­cured a 4-2 penal­ty-kicks vic­to­ry over Cen­tral Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion's Cunu­pia FC fol­low­ing a 1-1 draw; Cen­tral FC blanked Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League's Shi­va Boys' Hin­du Col­lege 2-0 and T&TEC need­ed kicks from the penal­ty spot to beat Pt Fortin Civic Cen­tre, win­ners of SFA tre­ble crown.

RE­SULTS

Wednes­day: Quar­ter­fi­nal:

Cale­do­nia AIA 1

(Shel­don Hold­er 55th)

vs Stoke­ly Vale 0

Semi­fi­nals:

Cen­tral FC 1

(Mar­vin Oliv­er 76th)

vs T&TEC FC 0

fix­tures

Semi­fi­nal:

Jan­u­ary 23:

North East Stars vs Cale­do­nia AIA,

Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo,

6 pm

Fi­nal:

March 1