San Juan North Sec­ondary and Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, will square off in the fi­nal of this year’s Co­ca Co­la Na­tion­al In­ter­Col ti­tle af­ter vic­to­ries against Cara­pichaima East Sec­ondary 2-0 and St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege 3-1 re­spec­tive­ly on Fri­day at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va.

With champs Na­pari­ma Col­lege out of the way, San Juan North, the beat­en fi­nal­ist back in 2016, were in a no-non­sense mood in the open­ing match and should have scored ear­ly on when the pro­lif­ic Isa­iah Chase ben­e­fit­ted from a goal-area scram­ble but with the goal at his mer­cy, he lift­ed his at­tempt over the bar.

But there was no stop­ping the San Juan boys from tak­ing the open­er from a ma­jor blun­der by goal­keep­er Aaron Best in the 30th minute. Isa­iah Chase’s clear­ance from the goal area should have fall­en in­to the com­fort­able hands of the cus­to­di­an, but he in­stead dropped it in­to the path Re­nal­do Boyce, who pounce quick­ly to steer the ball in­to the emp­ty net.

Mo­ments lat­er, San Juan sealed the win from a break­away by Chris­ton Mitchell. The slen­der-built strik­er elud­ed his mark­er be­fore slip­ping the ball be­yond the on­rush­ing goal­keep­er for a 2-0 ad­van­tage be­fore the half-time in­ter­val. The scores re­mained the same af­ter the in­ter­val, al­though there were a few eas­i­ly missed chances in the sec­ond ses­sion.

In the sec­ond match, Jaiye Shep­pard notched a dou­ble to spear­head a com­fort­able 3-1 tri­umph for Pre­sen­ta­tion over a wound­ed St An­tho­ny’s Tigers.

Shep­pard had the sim­ple task of just tap­ping in, af­ter a quick-pass­ing build-up down the left be­tween Ac­k­eel Ja­cob and Naeem Bis­nath, with the lat­ter sen­si­bly pick­ing out Shep­pard to fire in past the St An­tho­ny’s goal­keep­er Josi­ah Perez in the 18th minute.

Ja­cob scored the goal of the match to give his team a two-goal cush­ion in the 24th. The stocky strik­er was put through down the left side and un­der pres­sure from a St An­tho­ny’s de­fend­er, he cut in on his right foot be­fore un­leash­ing a pow­er­ful grounder that beat the dive of Perez in the Tigers goal.

Shep­pard then sealed the win in the 40th minute for the south­ern­ers with a head­er.

The lone St An­tho­ny’s goal came from a penal­ty by Kiron Man­swell af­ter Jean-Heim Mc Fee was brought down in the area.

Scores

SAN JUAN NORTH 2 (Re­nal­do Boyce 30th, Chris­ton Mitchell 42) v CARA­PICHAIMA EAST 0

PRE­SEN­TA­TION (SAN F’DO) 3 (Jaiye Shep­pard 18th & 40th, Ac­k­eel Ja­cob 24th) v ST AN­THO­NY’S COL­LEGE 1 (Kiron Man­swell 74th)