NIGEL SI­MON

Ger­ald Mel­oney got the de­ci­sive goal as Cunu­pia FC bat­tled past Queen's Park Crick­et Club (QPCC) for a 2-1 win in the T&T Su­per League Cup fi­nal at the Ari­ma Mu­nic­i­pal Sta­di­um on Sun­day night.

Go­ing in­to the match as un­der­dogs due to the sus­pen­sion of the Su­per League’s top-scor­er Kevon "Show­time" Wood­ley, Cunu­pia showed it was up for the task against the Parkites and took the lead in the 20th minute through Michael Darko from the penal­ty spot.

The Parkites drew lev­el al­so from the penal­ty spot via their own top strik­er De­von Mod­este in the 34th to set up an in­ter­est­ing sec­ond half.

In the end, Mel­oney’s 61st-minute goal se­cured the crown for Cunu­pia and a first win in three at­tempts against its op­po­nent this sea­son.

For the Parkites, it was the sec­ond time this sea­son they had to set­tle for an­oth­er run­ner-up fin­ish af­ter los­ing out in the ti­tle race to FC San­ta Rosa.

Ear­li­er this month, Cunu­pia made cer­tain FC San­ta Rosa would not add to its league tri­umph with a 4-3 penal­ty-kicks win af­ter a pul­sat­ing 3-3 full-time draw at the same Ari­ma venue.

Kevon Corn­wall fired San­ta Rosa ahead in the first minute, on­ly for 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.

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 equalis­er 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 oth­er semi­fi­nal, QPCC ran out a com­fort­able 3-0 win­ner over Pe­tit Val­ley/Diego Mar­tin Unit­ed with Rashad Grif­fith scor­ing in the 23rd minute, be­fore De­von Mod­este net­ted a dou­ble in the 41st and 67th min­utes.