RACHAEL THOMP­SON-KING

rachael.king@guardian.co.tt

Hughton Hec­tor starred for Guapo Up­ris­ing Youths to help the reign­ing cham­pi­on claim the $15,000 first-place prize in the De­porti­vo Point Fortin (PF) Com­mu­ni­ty Foot­ball League (CFL) on Sat­ur­day at the Ma­haica Sports Com­plex.

Hec­tor was named the “Man of the Match” (MOTM) af­ter lead­ing Guapo Up­ris­ing to a con­vinc­ing 3-0 vic­to­ry over La Brea All Stars to take top ho­n­ours and al­so col­lect­ed a sec­ond set of cham­pi­onship rings do­nat­ed by the Muhammed Isa Foun­da­tion af­ter de­fend­ing it 2019 ti­tle. Due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the com­pe­ti­tion was put on hold for two years.

Guapo Up­ris­ing made full use of the two weeks de­lay for the fi­nal. The ti­tle match was card­ed for No­vem­ber 26 but due to bad weath­er con­di­tions, was post­poned to the fol­low­ing Sat­ur­day (De­cem­ber 3) and the un­avail­abil­i­ty of the venue, forced or­gan­is­ers to resched­ule for last week­end.

But it did not take away from the ex­cite­ment as the Guapo-based unit dom­i­nat­ed the af­fair hav­ing three dif­fer­ent goal-scor­ers. Hec­tor was joined on the score­sheet by Jabari Mitchell and Justin Corn­wall.

A fit­ting fin­ish for Guapo Up­ris­ing, who played un­beat­en for the en­tire tour­na­ment top­ping Group Hearts in the two-round group stages over Erin Bor­der Play­ers and Egypt Unit­ed. In the quar­ter­fi­nals, Mitchell pro­duced a dou­ble to guide Guapo past Sport­ing Club Fyz­abad 2-1 to reach the semi­fi­nals, where the even­tu­al cham­pi­on came up against Pa­lo Seco Trip­py FC. Guapo emerged with a com­fort­able 2-1 vic­to­ry to book a spot in the fi­nal against La Brea, who had no an­swer for its op­po­nent.

The All Stars of La Brea took home the run­ner-up prize of $10,000. They al­so emerged out of the group stages un­de­feat­ed on top of Group Clubs ahead of Ce­dros Pi­rates and Fan­ny Vil­lage, win­ning three match­es and draw­ing one. La Brea then beat (Pace) Lake­view Unit­ed, 3-2 in their quar­ter­fi­nal match-up and next elim­i­nat­ed New Vil­lage FC in the semi­fi­nal round, 3-1, thanks to a brace from Shaquille John and the oth­er item from An­tho­ny Par­ris.

New Vil­lage was the next best squad in the 12-team com­pe­ti­tion, de­vel­oped to “Bring Com­mu­ni­ties To­geth­er”, edg­ing Pa­lo Seco Trip­py to col­lect the third-place prize of  $8,000.

Quinn Sealy scored the win­ner for New Vil­lage in the 1-0 vic­to­ry over Pa­lo Seco Trip­py, who re­ceived the $5,000 fourth-place prize. Sealy was named the top play­er of the clash.

Re­sults

Fi­nal

Guapo Up­ris­ing Youths 3 (Hughton Hec­tor, Jabari Mitchell, Justin Corn­wall) vs La Brea All Stars 0. MOTM - Hec­tor (Guapo Up­ris­ing)

Third place play­offs

New Vil­lage 1 (Quinn Sealy) vs Pa­lo Seco Trip­py 0. MOTM - Sealy (New Vil­lage)