De­fence and W Con­nec­tion will meet in the Toy­ota Clas­sic fi­nal af­ter post­ing nar­row semi­fi­nals win in a dou­ble-head­er at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo on Sun­day.

De­fence Force ad­vanced via a 1-0 win over two-time win­ners and de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Play Whe San Juan Jabloteh, and the Savonet­ta Boys out­last­ed ten-man Cen­tral FC 6-5 on penal­ty-kicks fol­low­ing a 2-2 draw.

For De­fence Force De­vorn Jorsling net­ted in the 41st minute with a right-foot­er from a Cur­tis Gon­za­les cross past Jabloteh goal­keep­er Shemel Loui­son in a play which be­gan from a quick­ly tak­en Je­lani Fe­lix free-kick.

Fe­lix lat­er struck the cross­bar and Jabloteh looked dan­ger­ous on a few oc­ca­sions, but it was Jorsling's first-half strike that sep­a­rat­ed both sides in the end af­ter a dis­mal con­test.

In the sec­ond se­mi-fi­nal, W Con­nec­tion goal­keep­er Ju­lani Archibald re­deemed him­self when he pro­duced the win­ning save when he de­nied a poor­ly tak­en strike by Cen­tral de­fend­er Ja­mal Jack af­ter both sides were neck and neck through­out.

W Con­nec­tion took a 1-0 lead in the 15th minute when Neil Ben­jamin Jr chipped an ad­vanc­ing goal­keep­er Jan-Michael Williams from just in­side the area af­ter rac­ing on­to an An­dre Tou­s­saint feed.

How­ev­er, Cen­tral mid­field­er Ataulla Guer­ra equalised two min­utes lat­er when he smashed a low dri­ve past Archibald af­ter com­bin­ing with Willis Plaza in a right side move ini­ti­at­ed by Nathaniel Gar­cia.Two min­utes in­to the sec­ond-half, an er­rant pass from Archibald al­lowed Plaza to score in­to an open net for a 2-1 Cou­va Shark­slead.

But with nine min­utes left on the clock, for­mer Cen­tral FC strik­er Dwight Quin­tero, who was in­tro­duced 13 min­utes from full-time at the ex­pense of de­fen­sive mid­field­er Briel Thomas drew his team lev­el with a glanc­ing head­er off an Alvin Jones' free-kick.

Three min­utes be­fore the fi­nal whis­tle, Cen­tral was re­duced to ten-men when ref­er­ee Keon Yorke is­sued Nathaniel Gar­cia an au­to­mat­ic red card with three min­utes for a foul on Jo­mal Williams.

De­spite the set­back, Cen­tral then came with­in inch­es of a late win­ner when Guer­ra's strike from dis­tance in the 89th minute skid­ded off the out­side of the base of goal­keep­er Archibald's up­right to the re­lief of W Con­nec­tion, who went on to win a nerve-wreck­ing penal­ty shootout 6-5.

For W Con­nec­tion, Jones, Jo­mal Williams, Shah­don Win­ches­ter and Ger­ard Williams con­vert­ed their at­tempts while Quin­tero went from hero to vil­lain as his ef­fort hit the up­right.Eli­jah Man­ners, Plaza and Dar­ren Mitchell al­so scored, with An­dre Et­ti­enne hit­ting over­bar.

In sud­den-death, Kurt Fred­er­ick scored for W Con­nec­tion and Mar­cus Joseph an­swered for Cen­tral FC as ten­sions rose to an­oth­er lev­el.

It was now down to Ben­jamin Jr, who al­so net­ted for W Con­nec­tion, be­fore Jack's lame ef­fort was kept out by Archibald to put his team in­to the fi­nal on Sun­day from 6.30 pm, where the win­ner will re­ceive $70,000 and the run­ners-up, will take $20,000.

The ac­tion kicks off from 4.30 pm be­tween St Mary's Col­lege (CIC) against Fa­ti­ma Col­lege in con­test for the Toy­ota Clas­sic Chal­lenge Tro­phy and $10,000.