T&T re­lin­quished a two-goal lead as Mex­i­co hit back to steal a 3-3 draw in their in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly at the Rio Tin­to Sta­di­um in Salt Lake City, Utah on Fri­day night.Just over a month ago, the So­ca War­riors ral­lied from a si­m­il­iar two goals down to steal a late 4-4 draw with "El Tri" but on Fri­day it took a stun­ning 84th minute strike from Hec­tor Her­rera to com­plete a Mex­i­can come­back from two goals down be­fore some 20,000 Mex­i­can fans.

De­spite con­ced­ing late, the "So­ca War­riors" left the sta­di­um with a burn­ing sense of pride as they more than held their own against the reign­ing CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup cham­pi­on and had the par­ti­san Mex­i­can crowd qui­et for long pe­ri­ods dur­ing the en­counter. Stephen Hart's men made an­oth­er state­ment to its fans and its up­com­ing CON­CA­CAF op­po­nents in 2018 World Cup qual­i­fy­ing.

"It was a per­for­mance and a re­sult that left me leav­ing the venue pleased tonight," Hart said. "I thought at times we looked very or­gan­ised. We were a bit in­de­ci­sive at cen­tre back a cou­ple of times but oth­er than that we looked very or­gan­ised. I was re­al­ly pleased with Glenn and how he put in a lot of work all along. We went on top but it was a great goal to tie it up. Over­all I'm sat­is­fied."

Both teams played with­out some reg­u­lar starters with Ken­wyne Jones and Shel­don Bateau miss­ing for T&T while Javier Her­nan­dez and An­dres Guarda­do were on the bench for Mex­i­co and Je­sus Coro­na and Gio­vani Dos San­tos were not in the team. The game though had all the in­gre­di­ents of a prop­er con­test.

T&T set­tled quick­ly, caus­ing Mex­i­co to ap­pear al­most edgy at times and their fans were left stunned in the sev­enth minute when Keron Cum­mings' at­tempt­ed shot at goal took a de­flec­tion and fell nice­ly for Jonathan Glenn who made the far post run to neat­ly head home for 1-0 T&T lead."It was just the start we want­ed. What it did was showed us that we don't have to chase an op­po­nent like Mex­i­co every­time we play them and this kind of start would help us re­alise this," Hart said.

Mex­i­co just couldn't seem to get a foot in the door as Hart's men re­mained sol­id, com­posed and were in no mood to be pushed around.

The Mex­i­cans did have their mo­ments but it would be T&T who surged fur­ther ahead. Glenn, mak­ing his first start for T&T, pro­duced a clever chal­lenge on Os­wal­do Ala­nis that won the ball on the edge of the box be­fore play­ing over for an await­ing Cum­mings to side foot in­to the net. T&T was now up 2-0 in the 39th minute. A first time score­line since the 4-0 win for T&T in the 1974 World Cup qual­i­fi­er when Ever­ald "Gal­ly Cum­mings notched a dou­ble.

"Go­ing 2-0 up, de­spite them scor­ing just be­fore the break was a good thing for us," said Hart.Mex­i­co, play­ing its first game un­der in­ter­im head coach Ri­car­do Fer­ret­ti, hit back be­fore the break with Car­los Es­quiv­el head­ing past cap­tain Jan Michael Williams in the 40th.Ten min­utes in­to the sec­ond half, Mex­i­co lev­elled the scores when Raul Jimenez's shot was head­ed in­to the net by T&T de­fend­er Daneil Cyrus.

T&T nev­er lost con­trol of its game and didn't al­low Mex­i­co to pull away ei­ther. Chica­go Fire's Jo­evin Jones wig­gled his way in­to the Mex­i­can penal­ty area but couldn't get his shot off be­fore hit­ting the turf in what ap­peared to be a foul on the play­er. And lat­er on Khaleem Hy­land di­rect­ed his ef­fort wide of the up­right.

Jones made amends in the 69th minute with a per­fect­ly tak­en left-foot­ed free-kick which left goal­keep­er Al­fre­do Ta­lav­era flat­foot­ed on his line.Hart made a few changes, bring­ing on Trevin Cae­sar, Mekeil Williams, Ke­van George, Willis Plaza and Ne­veal Hack­shaw in the sec­ond half.Mex­i­co be­gan to forge for­ward in des­per­ate search of the equalis­er and even­tu­al­ly got it with Her­rara's laser-like strike in­to the top left cor­ner past Williams five min­utes from time.

T&T will now look ahead to the Oc­to­ber 8 in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly away to Pana­ma while Mex­i­co faces Ar­genti­na in Dal­las on Tues­day. T&T be­gins its 2018 World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign on No­vem­ber 13 against ei­ther An­tigua/Bar­bu­da or Guatemala and will then host Unit­ed States on No­vem­ber 17.