Three dif­fer­ent play­ers were on tar­get as Cen­tral FC crushed fel­low T&T Pro League club, W Con­nec­tion 3-0 to keep hold of its Caribbean Foot­ball Union Club Cham­pi­onship crown at a rain-soaked Stade Sylvio Cator Sta­di­um, Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Sun­day.

In a re­peat of last year's de­cider, which Cen­tral FC won 2-1, the two Cou­va-based ri­vals fought out an epic bat­tle in front of sev­er­al thou­sand spec­ta­tors in a match that was shown live on Hait­ian TV.

The game be­gan in near­ly mon­soon like con­di­tions on the ar­ti­fi­cial turf of Haiti's na­tion­al sta­di­um with Cen­tral FC need­ing a first win over its ri­vals since the first match of the Pro League sea­son back in Sep­tem­ber when they lift­ed the Char­i­ty Shield to se­cure back-to-back ti­tles.

Since then, W Con­nec­tion had man­aged to get the bet­ter of Cen­tral FC in three league match­es and bashed them 4-2 in the Lu­cozade Goal Shield semi­fi­nal two weeks ago at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo.

But it was Cen­tral FC which took the lead in the ninth minute when Mar­cus Joseph con­vert­ed from a cor­ner.

Things be­came a lot tougher for the "Savonet­ta Boys" as W Con­nec­tion is known when Shadon Win­ches­ter was judged to have el­bowed Cen­tral FC de­fend­er Keion Goodridge and was award­ed a straight red card.

This was a bit­ter blow for W Con­nec­tion as Win­ches­ter was a po­tent force, hav­ing scored the sec­ond goal on Fri­day that killed off Ja­maica's Ar­nett Gar­dens in the semi­fi­nal, 2-0 vic­to­ry.

Yet be­ing re­duced to ten men in the first half on­ly seemed to make W Con­nec­tion more de­ter­mined and with­in min­utes they were award­ed a penal­ty.

How­ev­er, Alvin Jones, W Con­nec­tion's dead ball ex­pert, and scor­er of the open­ing goal in their semi­fi­nal win at the same venue on Fri­day saw his at­tempt well saved by Cen­tral FC 21-year-old goal­keep­er Javon Sam­ple.

Sam­ple start­ed the tour­na­ment as Cen­tral FC's third choice keep­er de­spite cap­tain­ing T&T's na­tion­al Un­der-20 team, but first choice keep­er, Jan-Michael Williams in­jured his shoul­der in the group match vs Mon­tego Bay in Ja­maica in March and will not play again this sea­son while re­serve keep­er, Akel Clarke, a Guyanese na­tion­al team goal­keep­er had stepped up ad­mirably to re­place T&T's first choice cus­to­di­an, but he suf­fered a knee lig­a­ment in­jury in Fri­days semi­fi­nal against hosts Don Bosco.

Sam­ple, who has been with Cen­tral FC since the club's first sea­son in 2012, jumped in­to the high pres­sure game and won the match for The Sharks with two saves in the penal­ty shoot-out.

On the re­sump­tion, Cen­tral FC start­ed bright­ly and came close to a sec­ond goal, with speedy mid­field­er Dar­ren Mitchell miss­ing a gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty while fel­low To­bag­on­ian Ja­mal Jack had a de­cent shout for a penal­ty waived off.

In last year's CFU fi­nal, Con­nec­tion end­ed the game against Cen­tral with nine men, and so it was again this year as Jones' two foot­ed tack­le was pe­nalised with a sec­ond yel­low- card.

The two man dis­ad­van­tage for W Con­nec­tion left them vul­ner­a­ble as they chased an equalis­er and it was Cen­tral's mav­er­ick strik­er, Ja­son Mar­cano who reaped the re­ward by net­ting his team's sec­ond be­fore Mitchell hit home a late item for a 3-0 win.

Cen­tral FC, field­ing a team com­prised en­tire­ly of T&T play­ers, be­came on­ly the sec­ond team af­ter Puer­to Ri­co Is­landers to do with an all home-based squad.The win was al­so a tes­ta­ment to the strength of the T&T Pro League as yet again, two teams from T&T made it to the fi­nal.

Over­all, 11 of the 16 CFU fi­nals have now been won by clubs from T&T, as com­pared to three from Ja­maica, while there have been ten T&T run­ners-up and two Ja­maican clubs.

Both Cen­tral FC and W Con­nec­tion will now look ahead to the Scotibank Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons League Group stages for 2016/2017.

CFU 2016 HO­N­OURS LISTS

Most Valu­able Play­er: Le­ston Paul

Most Goals: Dar­ren Mitchell & Mar­cus Joseph

Best De­fen­sive Play­er: Javon Sam­ple

Fair Play Award: Cen­tral FC