Nigel Si­mon

nigel.si­mon@guardian.co.tt

There will be no League and Cup dou­ble for FC San­ta Rosa this sea­son in the T&T Su­per League.

This af­ter the new­ly crowned league cham­pi­ons bowed out of the Cup semi­fi­nals af­ter a 4-3 penal­ty-kicks loss to ri­vals, Cunu­pia FC af­ter a pul­sat­ing 3-3 full-time draw at the Ari­ma Mu­nic­i­pal Sta­di­um, Ari­ma on Sun­day night.

The crowd hard­ly had time to di­gest the out­come of the night’s first match be­tween Queen’s Park Crick­et Club and Pe­tit Val­ley/Diego Mar­tin Unit­ed, when

Kevon Corn­wall fired San­ta Rosa ahead in the first minute, on­ly for Kevon “Show­time” Wood­ley to get Cunu­pia back on lev­el terms in the 22nd from the penal­ty spot.

How­ev­er, two min­utes lat­er, Gio­van­ni Abra­ham re­stored San­ta Rosa’s slim lead.

Michael Darko then drew Cunu­pia lev­el again in the 31st minute and a minute in­to time added on at the end of the first-half, Wood­ley, the league’ s top scor­er put his club ahead for the first time.

The sec­ond-half was a much more cagey af­fair with both clubs strug­gling to add to their tal­ly, un­til Noel Williams banged home an 83rd minute equal­iz­er for San­ta Rosa to keep out­go­ing coach, Derek King, who will be off to Cana­da to link up with for­mer na­tion­al coach Stephen Hart, hopes of a sec­ond ti­tle this sea­son alive.

But it was not to be as in the penal­ty shoot-out, Cunu­pia showed bet­ter nerves and firm fin­ish­ing to edge the match, 4-3.

In the fi­nal, Cunu­pia will face Su­per League run­ner-up, Queen’s Park Crick­et Club, com­fort­able 3-0 win­ners over Pe­tit Val­ley/Diego Mar­tin Unit­ed in their semi­fi­nal with Rashad Grif­fith scor­ing in the 23rd minute, be­fore De­von Mod­este’s dou­ble, in the 41st and 67th min­utes.

The fi­nal will be played at the same Ari­ma venue on Sun­day from 6 pm.