Queen's Roy­al Col­lege (QRC) con­ced­ed four goals in the space of 20 min­utes and sur­ren­dered what was seen as three cer­tain points against Spey­side High School in their Pre­mier­ship Di­vi­sion clash of the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) in Spey­side on Mon­day.

Coach Nigel Groves­nor said af­ter­wards his play­ers were com­plete­ly drained af­ter a dif­fi­cult en­counter on Sat­ur­day in which they won 4-3 over Trin­i­ty Mo­ka away. "A day lat­er we were on a boat en route to the sis­ter-isle of To­ba­go for the en­counter against Spey­side. And to be hon­est we were well in con­trol of the match in the first half and most of the sec­ond half when ex­haus­tion took place," Groves­nor ex­plained yes­ter­day.

He added, "The guys re­al­ly could not push them­selves fur­ther, so I com­mend them for the ef­fort."

The Roy­alians got a dou­ble strike from in­flu­en­tial mid­field­er Nathaniel James and an own goal to take them 3-0 ahead. They main­tained that po­si­tion un­til mid­way in the sec­ond half when a gut­sy dis­play by Spey­side saw them scor­ing goals from Je­lani James (75th), Deleon Beck­les (83rd), Nicholas Sanchez (85th) and Adriel George (90+3) to win 4-3.

Spey­side coach Ker­ry Lynch said his team was al­ways in the match, de­spite the goals from the Roy­alians. "In fact, we missed a penal­ty in the 5th minute from C'el Top­pin and had many chances in the game."

Ac­cord­ing to Lynch, his team in­tends to win their re­main­ing match­es in the League, not­ing "We al­so be­lieve that we can achieve this. In all the match­es we have played, we were nev­er out-played by any­one, Lead­ers Na­pari­ma scored on us late in the match, oth­er­wise, it was an even­ly con­test­ed af­fair."

Mean­while, QRC's en­counter with Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege sched­uled for the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um in Mara­bel­la has been post­poned to a date and venue to be de­cid­ed, af­ter the Roy­alians were un­able to make it back to Trinidad in time.

Na­pari­ma will at­tempt to ex­tend its lead at the top of the stand­ing with a tricky test at home to Cara­pichaima. The two teams are the on­ly un­beat­en teams in the League present­ly but Naps will be hop­ing to en­joy home ad­van­tage.

If they achieve this, a win will push the south­ern­ers to 29 points. How­ev­er, Caps will move to 22 points to oc­cu­py ei­ther sec­ond or third po­si­tion on the ta­ble, de­pend­ing on the out­come of the St An­tho­ny's and Pleas­antville Sec­ondary en­counter at West moor­ings.

WEDNES­DAY'S MATCH­ES

St Au­gus­tine vs Spey­side Sec @ St Au­gus­tine

Na­pari­ma vs Cara­pichaima @Lewis Street

Trin­i­ty East vs East Mu­cu­rapo @Trin­i­ty East

San­Juan North vs Mal­ick @San Juan

Trin­i­ty Mo­ka vs St Bene­dict's @ Mo­ka

St An­tho­ny's Col­lege vs Pleas­antville Sec @St An­tho­ny's

Lat­est Stand­ings

Team*P*W*D*L*F*A*GD*PTS

1*Na­pari­ma*10*8*2*0*25*10*15*26

2*Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege*9*7*1*1*25*6*19*22

3*St An­tho­ny’s*9*6*2*1*31*10*21*20

4*Cara­pichaima Sec*9*5*4*0*16*9*7*19

5*East Mu­cu­rapo*9*5*3*1*18*8*10*18

6*QRC*9*5*1*3*18*20*-2*16

7*San Juan North*9*3*2*4*19*7*12*11

8*St Au­gus­tine*9*2*4*3*18*16*-2*10

9*Pleas­antville Sec*9*3*1*5*12*14*-2*10

10*Mal­ick Sec*10*3*1*6*15*19*-4*10

11*Trin­i­ty East*8*2*2*4*13*18*-5*8

12*Spey­side Sec*9*2*2*5*11*24*-13*8

13*St Bene­dict’s*9*2*1*6*8*19*-11*7

14*Trin­i­ty Mo­ka*9*1*1*7*11*31*-20*4

15*St Mary’s*10*1*1*8*5*34*-29*4