Club San­do FC moved with­in three points of ad­vanc­ing from the group stage at the Con­ca­caf Caribbean Cup on Tues­day night when they shut out arch-ri­vals De­fence Force 2-0 at Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo.

Vir­tu­al new­com­ers to the re­gion­al tour­na­ment, Club San­do had more than one rea­son to cel­e­brate on Tues­day night, be­fore a crowd that cre­at­ed over­whelm­ing sup­port for both teams.

Team coach An­gus Eve told the me­dia at a post-match press con­fer­ence that his team wants to emerge from the group, and the re­sult was a step in that di­rec­tion.

Oth­er­wise, the South­ern­ers got the re­sult to ded­i­cate it to their mid­field­er Kadeem Git­tens, a sol­dier who played with them all sea­son but was not giv­en the all-clear to rep­re­sent them at the re­gion­al tour­na­ment.

Git­tens, though, had his eyes glued to the match as they took the ad­van­tage in the 24th minute, a goal that set the stage for the win.

De­fence Force over­lap­ping de­fend­er Ja­mali Gar­cia’s at­tempt at a pass in the mid­dle third was in­ter­cept­ed by cap­tain Sher­vohnez Hamil­ton, who found him­self all alone in at­tack down the left flank.

Hamil­ton, who told re­porters in a pre-game press con­fer­ence that his charges would play each game on its mer­it, then cen­tred for the on­com­ing Luke Phillips, who con­nect­ed with a one-time shot in­to the roof of the net for a 1-0 lead.

The South­ern­ers could have had an­oth­er in the 38th minute, on­ly for an out­stand­ing save by goal­keep­er Christo­pher Biggette to de­ny Club San­do’s sec­ond goal from their skip­per’s loop­ing head­er.

On the oth­er side of the pitch, how­ev­er, Gar­cia sought re­demp­tion for his ear­li­er mis­take, but he failed to make sol­id con­tact on two cross­es that were di­rect­ed to him to use his ad­van­tage in height from the cor­ner kicks.

Club San­do didn’t stop their pur­suit of a sec­ond goal and were re­ward­ed in the 67th minute. This time Keron Corn­wall car­ried the ball all the way to the area be­fore lay­ing it for Hamil­ton to score with a left-foot­ed shot from an acute an­gle.

In the re­main­ing mo­ments, it was all Club San­do, who could have ex­tend­ed their ad­van­tage, on­ly for Biggette to keep out An­dell Fras­er twice.

The win pushed the South­ern­ers to six points, with an­oth­er vic­to­ry cer­tain to help them ad­vance from the group. The Army Coast-Guard Civil­ian Com­bi­na­tion team, on the oth­er hand, faces elim­i­na­tion with just the one win over SV Bro­ki of Suri­name, sav­ing their blush­es af­ter loss­es to AC Vi­o­lette of Haiti 3-0, and now Club San­do.

Eve, whose team faces oth­er chal­lenges, more so which are fi­nan­cial, said, “So we want to get over the group, and this is our next step in that right di­rec­tion. It was very good, to be hon­est; there were some nig­gling in­juries, and we have a very small squad, but we don’t com­plain; we just get on with it.

“The guys who were on the pitch did their part, and you see the sub­sti­tutes went on and per­formed again tonight. Maybe we may have to change up the team a bit for the third game.”

Eve al­so not­ed, “We’re just tak­ing it one game at a time. It’s all we can do just to take it one game at a time. We’ll go back to the draw­ing board and look at the mis­takes that we’ve made tonight. We kept a clean sheet. I thought our goal­keep­er was spec­tac­u­lar in tak­ing the balls; the de­fend­ers did their jobs, and the mid­field­ers did, too, and we had a few more chances that we could have tak­en, but this puts us in a good po­si­tion.

“We be­lieve that if we could go on and get the vic­to­ry in the next game, and we’re play­ing at home, it would put us in a good spot go­ing in­to the sec­ond round.”

De­fence Force coach Walt Nor­ie­ga said they dis­ap­point­ed on the night.

“How do you fix this prob­lem? Our dif­fer­ences and men­tal prepa­ra­tion all need to be done. We put our­selves in a deep hole, but it’s foot­ball, so we have to go dig deep and fin­ish off the tour­na­ment.”