Walt Nor­eiga, coach of T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League cham­pi­ons AC Port-of-Spain, says his team needs to work on game man­age­ment if they are to get any­thing out of their sec­ond cam­paign in the 2024 Con­ca­caf Caribbean Cup at Es­ta­dio Mo­ca 85 in Mo­ca, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, on Tues­day night.

Last year, AC PoS en­dured a mis­er­able cam­paign on de­but in the tour­na­ment, fin­ish­ing bot­tom of their five-team round-robin Group A se­ries with a lone point from a 1-1 draw against fel­low T&T club De­fence Force, to show in four match­es.

In their oth­er match­es, the ‘Cap­i­tal City Boyz’ were de­feat­ed 3-2 by the Gold­en Li­ons of Mar­tinique, 2-1 by Ja­maica’s Cav­a­lier FC, and 1-0 by the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic’s Mo­ca FC. 

The Army/Coast Guard com­bi­na­tion end­ed third in the group with five points and just shy of a semi­fi­nal spot af­ter falling to Mo­ca 2-0, draw­ing 1-1 with Cav­a­lier and edg­ing Gold­en Li­on 1-0 in their oth­er match­es.

So far this sea­son, AC PoS—in their first two match­es in their five-team Group B round-robin se­ries—have picked up a mere point from their open­ing match, a 1-1 draw with Haiti’s Oua­naminthe FC on Ju­ly 22, be­fore squan­der­ing a 2-0 lead in a 3-2 loss to Mo­ca FC, both at Es­ta­dio Mo­ca 85 in Mo­ca, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, on Tues­day night.

As it stands, Mo­ca FC and fel­low Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic out­fit Cibao FC share the lead in Group B with four points each from two match­es, while Oua­naminthe FC and AC PoS are next with a point each, and Grenades are at the bot­tom of the ta­ble with­out a point. 

In the drawn out­come with the Haitians, AC PoS took the lead through Shack­iel Hen­ry in the 34th minute, on­ly for Joseph Will­inx to earn Oua­naminthe a share of the points.

Last Tues­day, mid­field­er John-Paul Ro­chord scored a curl­ing free-kick in the 41st minute and dou­bled the lead four min­utes af­ter the re­sump­tion with a close range head­er to put AC PoS on the road to vic­to­ry.

How­ev­er, Mo­ca FC then mount­ed a stun­ning come­back, helped by some slop­py de­fend­ing from AC PoS, with Alan Aciar scor­ing from close range in the 51st, fol­lowed by Gus­ta­vo As­cona in the 62nd, and Clif­ford Thomas, with a last-minute penal­ty, af­ter Rochford had a chance to com­plete a hat-trick from the penal­ty spot as well but blast­ed his at­tempt over­bar.

Re­flect­ing on his team’s per­for­mances so far, Nor­eiga said, “In our first match against Oua­naminthe FC, we had a rel­a­tive­ly de­cent first half where we passed and pos­sessed the ball well and cre­at­ed open­ings where we could have hurt the team with bet­ter de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

“In the sec­ond, we lost a lot of mo­men­tum and en­er­gy, and we turned the ball over, and our man­age­ment of the game was lack­ing.

“The team (AC PoS) was hold­ing their shape, but the boys start­ed to get fa­tigue around the 60-65 minute mark, and we had to make some ad­just­ments in the team due to the fa­tigue to see out the game, which earned us a point.

“Then in our sec­ond match we again man­aged the first half well and were able to con­strict what Mo­ca was try­ing to do, and we were able to open up spaces and pass the ball well and show good dom­i­nance in the way we want­ed to play and was able to cre­ate prob­lems for them and led 1-0 at the half,” ex­plained Nore­gia. 

“We again start­ed well in the sec­ond half by get­ting the sec­ond goal through good build-up play, and at this point we looked com­fort­able, but then there was a spell where we didn’t man­age the game prop­er­ly for about 12 min­utes and they came back in­to the game,” added Nor­eiga. 

“The first goal they scored from the cor­ner brought their fans in­to the game, and it gave them that lit­tle ex­tra push to keep com­ing at us, and in that spell, I do be­lieve we could have de­fend­ed bet­ter and man­aged that pe­ri­od a lot bet­ter than we did.

“How­ev­er, un­for­tu­nate­ly we con­ced­ed a sec­ond goal from them, which tied up the match at 2-2, and from then on it was a see-saw bat­tle where we were try­ing to man­age the boys legs and to get back some sort of sta­bil­i­ty in the team and try and see the game out.

“We were then giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to go ahead with a penal­ty, which we didn’t take, and then a few min­utes lat­er they were award­ed a penal­ty, which they scored to take the win, and again, these kinds of sit­u­a­tions we have to take as a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

“It’s about know­ing how to man­age the pe­ri­ods where we con­ced­ed those goals, and go­ing for­ward, it’s some­thing that we need to work on, and hope­ful­ly in the two match­es we have at home in Sep­tem­ber we will get it right.”

AC PoS hosts An­tigua and Bar­bu­da’s Grenades FC, the Caribbean Foot­ball Union Club Shield run­ners-up, on Sep­tem­ber 17 and one week lat­er al­so wel­comes Cibao FC of the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

Look­ing ahead to those two match­es, Nor­eiga said, “We are still in with a chance to qual­i­fy from the group, but we have to go for max­i­mum points in our re­main­ing match­es if we want to get out of the group.”

In Group A, Ja­maica’s Cav­a­lier FC, the club of T&T winger Kaile Au­vray, leads with a max­i­mum of six points from two match­es, three ahead of fel­low Ja­maican club Mount Pleas­ant, while T&T’s Mis­cel­la­neous Po­lice FC and Haiti’s Re­al Hope have one point each with Ar­nett Gar­dens, the third Ja­maican club in the group, with­out a point.