Two-time for­mer Con­ca­caf Club cham­pi­ons in 1978 and 1987, T&T De­fence Force will go in­to its fi­nal match in Pool A of the Con­ca­caf Caribbean Cup, need­ing noth­ing less than a win against sec­ond-placed Mo­ca FC of the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic to ad­vance to the semi­fi­nals.

Go­ing in­to Wednes­day night’s clash at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo from 8.06 pm, Ja­maica’s Cav­a­lier FC leads the five-club round-robin ta­ble with sev­en points and is cer­tain of a place in the semi­fi­nals.

The Ja­maicans will be joined by ei­ther, Mo­ca (six points) or De­fence Force (five points), while Mar­tinique’s Gold­en Li­on, who has three points, is out of con­tention ahead of its clash away against the group leader at the Pierre Alik­er Sta­di­um, in Forte De France, Mar­tinique al­so kick­ing from 8.06 pm Wednes­day night.

The Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic team, who has al­ready de­feat­ed T&T’s oth­er team in the group, AC Port-of-Spain 1-0 last month on home soil, will en­ter the win­ner-take-all clash with a slight ad­van­tage by sit­ting in sec­ond place in the group with six points, a sin­gle point ahead of De­fence Force and will be tempt­ed to be on the coun­ter­at­tack, some­thing which can work in the host club’s favour.

How­ev­er, for De­fence Force and coach Lloyd “Sonoltee” An­drews, the mis­sion is straight­for­ward - win and earn the full three points to guar­an­tee a semi­fi­nal spot and could pos­si­bly be enough to win the group as well, de­pend­ing on the out­come of the match be­tween Gold­en Li­on and Cav­a­lier.

Mo­ca al­so de­feat­ed Gold­en Li­on 3-0 to put them­selves in this po­si­tion to ad­vance, while De­fence Force edged Gold­en Li­on 1-0 but drew 1-1 at home to Cav­a­lier and AC PoS, the last re­sult com­ing sev­en days ago in a lack­lus­tre per­for­mance which dent­ed their chances of qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the next stage.

Hav­ing on­ly scored three goals from as many match­es, coach An­drews will hope his at­tack­ing op­tions of Re­on Moore, who has a pair of goals, Ja­mali Gar­cia, Jameel Coop­er, Hashim Ar­cia, Brent Sam and Lashawn Roberts could find their scor­ing boots which has de­sert­ed them so far in the com­pe­ti­tion, along with de­fend­er Justin Gar­cia, who came up with vi­tal goals dur­ing their suc­cess­ful T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League (TTPFL) and Cup-dou­ble tri­umph ear­li­er this sea­son.

Speak­ing ahead of the all-im­por­tant match, An­drews ad­mit­ted that his team has hit a bad patch af­ter a long and gru­elling sea­son.

“We would have played 16 match­es un­beat­en to end the 22-match TTPFL and our sea­son be­gan since Jan­u­ary with prepa­ra­tions, so with us now be­ing in Oc­to­ber, it’s kind of ex­pect­ed that our lev­el would drop off a bit.

“Some­times even dur­ing a good run, a team can have a bad game and against AC PoS, we had a re­al­ly bad game by our (De­fence Force) stan­dards and against Mo­ca, we will be look­ing to put the wrong, right,” said a con­fi­dent An­drews.

For tonight’s en­counter, An­drews said na­tion­al play­er Kai­him Thomas will be the lone play­er out as he is yet to ful­ly re­cov­er from the ef­fects of be­ing in­volved in a car ac­ci­dent.

Ques­tioned on his team’s lack of goals af­ter rack­ing up 53 in the do­mes­tic league com­pe­ti­tion, An­drews said it has hit his team at a bad time.

“We are suf­fer­ing from a lack of goals when we need to be scor­ing goals, and it’s the same thing which has hap­pened to AC PoS, and maybe it’s be­cause of the pause in our lo­cal sea­son, which has caused our form to drop off.

“But, we go in­to this match full of con­fi­dence that the play­ers will come good. We have to con­tin­ue to be pa­tient and hope that when one goes in, it will con­tin­ue to flow be­cause we need to win to ad­vance.

Com­ment­ing on his op­po­nent, Mo­ca, the De­fence Force coach he has not seen much of them.

“What we do know is that they like to play a short pass­ing in­tri­cate game, so we have to be fo­cus and alert and win the key match-ups and chal­lenges, play as a team and take our chances,” said An­drews.

For Mo­ca coach Ser­gio Guz­man will look to the duo of Gus­ta­vo As­cona and Vic­tor Sanchez to get his team past the host with a com­bined three goals be­tween the pair of the four scored by the club.

Over­all, De­fence Force have 13 Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons Cup ap­pear­ances to their name and an all-time record of 24 wins, 11 draws, and 18 loss­es in the tour­na­ment

In Group B, Ja­maica’s Har­bour View leads with sev­en points and is al­ready through to the semi­fi­nal ahead of its clash away to Cibao, which is bot­tom of the ta­ble with one point from three match­es, while sec­ond-placed Robin Hood with six points host Pan­to­ja, with three points.

The knock­out stage com­pris­es home and away semi­fi­nals, third place, and fi­nal and at the con­clu­sion of the Caribbean Cup, the cham­pi­ons qual­i­fy for the Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons Cup round of 16, while the run­ners-up and third-place fin­ish­er for the open­ing round.

Match Of­fi­cials De­fence Force FC (T&TI) vs Mo­ca FC (Dom Rep)

Ref­er­ee: Shavin Greene (Guyana)

As­sis­tant Ref­er­ee 1: Kleon Lindey (Guyana)

As­sis­tant Ref­er­ee 2: Sard­joe Wid­jay (Suri­name)

Fourth Of­fi­cial: Shekiel Jok­il (Suri­name)

Cur­rent stand­ings

Group A

Teams*P*W*D*L*F*A*Pts

Cav­a­lier*3*2*1*0*6*2*7

Mo­ca*3*2*0*1*4*3*6

De­fence Force*3*1*2*0*3*2*5

Gold­en Li­on*3*1*0*2*3*6*3

AC PoS*4*0*1*3*4*7*1

Group B

Har­bour View*3*2*1*0*5*3*7

SV Robin­hood*3*2*0*1*5*3*6

Dun­be­hold­en*4*1*1*2*3*5*4

Pan­to­ja*3*0*3*0*3*3*3

Cibao*3*0*1*2*2*4*1