An­drew Gioan­net­ti

T&T's Ca­lyp­so War­riors yes­ter­day of­fi­cial­ly re­gained its claim as the most suc­cess­ful tier three rug­by union team in the re­gion, by lift­ing the North Amer­i­ca and Caribbean Rug­by As­so­ci­a­tion (Nacra) Rug­by Cham­pi­onship for the third time with a 30-16 win over Mex­i­co at St mary's ground in St Clair.As with the North Zone cham­pi­onship win over Guyana two weeks ago, yes­ter­day's grand fi­nale had its ner­vous mo­ments from the home per­spec­tive but any doubt of a T&T win was put to rest late on with a bril­liant so­lo try from Ag­boola Sil­ver­thorn.

No stranger to an im­pres­sive try, Sil­ver­thorn stole the show af­ter re­ceiv­ing a pass from An­drew Tay­lor at mid-field, be­fore dart­ing past two sets of Mex­i­co play­ers, us­ing tremen­dous agili­ty and strength. Tay­lor con­vert­ed to close the scor­ing.That was T&T's on­ly try of the pe­ri­od and one that fol­lowed two sec­ond half tries from a re­vived Mex­i­co, a team large­ly dom­i­nat­ed in the first.

T&T went in­to the break with a com­fort­able 23-6 ad­van­tage, af­ter Samuel Roberts (10th minute) and Jonathan O'Con­nor (31st) scored one try each, the lat­ter of which was con­vert­ed by Tay­lor, as well as an­oth­er two penal­ties from Tay­lor. In the fi­nal minute of the first half, T&T was award­ed five more points by the ref­er­ee af­ter a Mex­i­co play­er was found guilty of pulling a try-bound Sil­ver­thorn by the hair.

O'Con­nor's pushover try at the hour-hour mark, fol­lowed a minute af­ter Mex­i­co's Mar­cus Fleg­mann was di­rect­ed to the sin bin for an at­tempt­ed punch at Ernest Wright.Mex­i­co was a dif­fer­ent team af­ter the break, prob­a­bly in­spired by a blow-out from the coach, Ruben Duque.Af­ter the whis­tle sound­ed for the restart, Mex­i­co resur­faced this time with a try from a fired up Fleg­mann, the same play­er tem­porar­i­ly eject­ed in the first half.

Then, on the hour mark, Fe­li­cian Guer­ra had the ho­n­our of a tem­po­rary ejec­tion him­self, tak­ing one for the T&T team, af­ter fail­ing to roll away af­ter a tack­le and with re­peat­ed warn­ings from the ref­er­ee.In the 67th minute, soon be­fore Guer­ra re­turned, Mex­i­co cap­i­talised once again from the mount­ed pres­sure with a try from Si­mon Pierre.

There­after, T&T re­gained com­po­sure and some con­trol, but did not look dan­ger­ous enough to ex­tend the ad­van­tage. But it did come, and fol­low­ing a piece of mag­ic from Sil­ver­thorn, a mem­ber of T&T's sev­ens team at the Com­mon­wealth Games in Glas­gow, last year.Af­ter a typ­i­cal­ly sol­id per­for­mance, T&T cap­tain Adam Fred­er­ick gave his take on the match, but played down any sug­ges­tion that his team was played ex­cep­tion­al­ly well, at least in the sec­ond half.

"It could've been bet­ter. I al­ways say that we could do bet­ter. But, the first half, I mean, there were no prob­lems in the first half. It was ef­fort­less; it just came nat­ur­al to us," he said. "(In) the sec­ond half, we kind of went down. It wasn't the best (half)."Over the two pe­ri­ods, T&T's chem­istry had vis­i­bly im­proved from the nar­row win over Guyana. There were few­er un­forced er­rors and blun­ders. The pass­ing and off-the-ball move­ment from T&T were flu­id and quick, and the War­riors' tack­ling, for the most part, was full and as­sertive.

Fred­er­ick, how­ev­er, is adaman that as a whole, el­e­men­tary im­prove­ments are nec­es­sary for this coun­try to progress in in­ter­na­tion­al rug­by."Catch­es on the kick-offs, the ba­sic things, the restarts are the ba­sic things that let us down. We need to be a lit­tle more se­cure. "We def­i­nite­ly im­proved at each pass­ing game. The boys have grown well to­geth­er. It was our main fo­cus and stick­ing to the game plan that ac­tu­al­ly did it for us."

He, his team­mates and the staff went on to lift the Nacra tro­phy for the first time in sev­en year. But just be­fore, in a most fit­ting and pore-rais­ing trib­ute to one of their for­mer team­mates, Fred­er­ick and com­pa­ny sur­round­ed Ja­son "Moon" Clarke to cel­e­brate with him as they per­formed their rit­u­al chant. Clark, al­so a for­mer Caribs stand-out was in­volved in an car ac­ci­dent three years ago, which left him paral­ysed and in a wheel­chair.