Four dif­fer­ent play­ers were on tar­get to lead a de­plet­ed De­fence Force to a 4-1 drub­bing of Prison Ser­vice FC to end their 2024/2025 T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League Tier I cam­paign with an un­beat­en 22-match record at the Ken Cooke Ground, St James Po­lice Bar­racks, Long Cir­cu­lar Road, St James, on Sun­day night.

De­spite the ab­sence of strike duo Kevin Moli­no and Isa­iah Lea­cock, both with 16 goals and one be­hind MIC Cen­tral FC Re­boot’s Ty­rone Charles in the hunt for the top scor­ers award, due to their com­mit­ments with the T&T se­nior men’s na­tion­al team, De­fence Force was a dom­i­nant force through­out, with Cory­at hit­ting home the go-ahead item in the 20th minute while Dar­ius Ol­livier­ra added a sec­ond item six min­utes be­fore the half-time whis­tle.

Aaron Pe­ters got Prison Ser­vice on the board in the 64th minute, but that was as close as they got, with Jameel Coop­er and Kendall Hit­lal adding late items for the league cham­pi­ons in the 87th and 90th min­utes, re­spec­tive­ly, to seal the win, their 20th from 22 match­es, to end with 62 points, 16 clear of MIC Cen­tral FC Re­boot, with both teams now set to rep­re­sent T&T in the Con­ca­caf Caribbean Cup as the top two fin­ish­ers on the ta­ble, while Mis­cel­la­neous Po­lice FC and de­throned cham­pi­ons Ath­let­ic Club Port-of-Spain (AC PoS) will com­pete in the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) Club Shield, a qual­i­fi­er to the Con­ca­caf Caribbean Cup.

Speak­ing af­ter the win, for­mer na­tion­al strik­er and De­fence Force as­sis­tant coach De­vorn Jorsling said it was a bril­liant league cam­paign for the team.

Jorsling added, “To go un­de­feat­ed in the league cam­paign, I don’t think it has ever hap­pened in league his­to­ry, and when we sat out in pre-sea­son, we didn’t en­vi­sion this, but our goal was to win the league, but we didn’t know it would hap­pen in this style.”

“So we have to say con­grats to our man­age­ment team, the play­ers most im­por­tant­ly and the tech­ni­cal staff, and now for us the work just got a bit tougher go­ing in­to the CFU qual­i­fiers.”

Asked who he would say was the team’s play­er of the sea­son, Jorsling said it would be re­al­ly dif­fi­cult to name one per­son.

“We had some re­al­ly bril­liant per­form­ers like Isa­iah Lea­cock and Justin Sadoo, who would be among them, along with some oth­er dif­fer­ent play­ers dur­ing the course of the sea­son, but for me it will have to be the skip­per, Kevin Moli­no.”

“I think not play­ing foot­ball for over a year to come back in­to the league and do what he has done has been a bril­liant sea­son for him,” stat­ed Jorsling.

De­fence Force will now shift their fo­cus to the First Cit­i­zens Cup semi­fi­nal against MIC Matu­ra Re­Unit­ed on June 11, while De­fence Force Tier II squad faces Mis­cel­la­neous Po­lice FC in the oth­er.

Ear­li­er on the night, Cale­do­nia AIA eked out a 1-0 win over FC Ea­gles via an 88th-minute win­ner from Zion Car­pette to end their sea­son on a high, with the win­ning cap­tain, Car­lyle Mitchell, 37, hint­ing at his Re­boot “Man-of-the-Match’ award pre­sen­ta­tion that it was prob­a­bly his last match.

—Nigel Si­mon