Mal­ick Sec­ondary School scored its first win in the Big Five play-off in the Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion of the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL), by shut­ting out To­ba­go gi­ants Spey­side Sec­ondary 2-0 at St Mary's Col­lege Ground, St Clair, yes­ter­day.

The north­ern­ers which drew 3-3 with Ch­agua­nas North last week, re­bound­ed nice­ly to move to four points at the top of the ta­ble. In­flu­en­tial strik­er Zion Car­pette opened the scor­ing for his team by skil­ful­ly curl­ing the ball past the Spey­side goal­keep­er from a free­kick in the 52nd minute.

Three min­utes lat­er Mal­ick, once a pow­er­house in north foot­ball, seems to be well on their way back when Nicholas Roach was out through on a one-on-one, and he slipped the ball past the on­rush­ing cus­to­di­an for the win­ner in the 55th. Mal­ick coach An­tho­ny Bartholomew pre­dict­ed a win for his team and his lads did not dis­ap­point on the day.

Ker­ry Lynch, the Spey­side coach said his team cre­at­ed nu­mer­ous chances on the bal­anced af­fair, but they could not cap­i­talise on them. Mal­ick will next face east zone win­ner Holy Cross Col­lege on Fri­day at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um in Mal­abar Ari­ma, while Spey­side and Pleas­antville Sec­ondary will tan­gle in the oth­er en­counter in To­ba­go.

Holy Cross, known as the Cal­vary Hill Boys were al­so in win­ner's row yes­ter­day, whip­ping Ch­agua­nas North Sec­ondary 4-2, cour­tesy a hat-trick from na­tion­al un­der-14 strik­er Jashawn Thomas. The un­stop­pable Thomas was as­sist­ed by Daniel Warn­er who got the oth­er item in their tri­umph.