T&T de­fend­er Ke­ston Julien marked his re­turn from a month out in­jury and miss­ing four match­es by set­ting up FC Sher­iff Tiraspol's goal in a 1-1 draw with FC Zim­bru Chisin­au in the Moldovan Na­tion­al Di­vi­sion at the CPTF Sta­di­um, Chisin­au on Sun­day.

Hav­ing missed his team’s last three do­mes­tic match­es as well as the his­toric Cham­pi­ons League de­but since pick­ing up the ham­string in­jury in a Fourth Round Cham­pi­ons League qual­i­fi­er against Di­namo Za­greb on Au­gust 17, a 3-0 win, the 22-year-old Julien de­liv­ered was named in his team's start­ing eleven.

And he wast­ed lit­tle time to make his im­pact felt as he was a con­stant threat down the left side be­fore he de­liv­ered a pin-point left foot­ed flight­ed cross to the far post where it was met by a pow­er­ful head­er from Boban Nikolov that the Zim­bru goal­keep­er could on­ly par­ry in­to the roof of his net in the 34th minute.

How­ev­er, the host would earn a share of the points when Ste­fan Burghiu net­ted in the 61st minute.

With the drawn re­sult, 19-time league win­ners and reign­ing cham­pi­ons Sher­iff stayed fourth on the eigh-team ta­ble with 13 points from six match­es, eight points be­hind Mil­sa­mi who have played three match­es more while Petrocub is sec­ond with 20 points from ten match­es, and FC Balti, third with 14 points al­so from ten match­es.

A for­mer Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege of San Fer­nan­do play­er, the Gas­par­il­lo-born Julien and his club-mates re­turn to do­mes­tic league play on Wednes­day against cel­lar-placed FC Flo­resti be­fore fac­ing sec­ond-from-bot­tom Di­namo Au­to on Sat­ur­day.

They will then trav­el to Spain for their sec­ond match in Group D of the 2021 Eu­ro­pean Cham­pi­ons League group stage against record-13 win­ners Re­al Madrid.

On Sep­tem­ber 15, FC Sher­iff Tiraspol marked their de­but in the pres­ti­gious com­pe­ti­tion with a 2-0 home win over Ukrain­ian cham­pi­ons Shakhtar Donet­sk, with Julien an un­used sub­sti­tute while Re­al Madrid ekes out a 1-0 win away to Ital­ian cham­pi­ons In­ter Mi­lan.

Should Julien fea­ture for his club in the Cham­pi­ons League he will join David Nakhid, Dwight Yorke, Mar­vin An­drews, Rus­sell Lat­apy, Neil "Sha­ka" His­lop and Khaleem Hy­land as T&T play­ers to have fea­tured in the Cham­pi­ons League.

Sher­iff will end round one play in the Cham­pi­ons League away to In­ter Mi­lan on Oc­to­ber 19 be­fore sec­ond round match­es against In­ter Mi­lan on No­vem­ber 3; Re­al Madrid on No­vem­ber 24, and Shakhtar on De­cem­ber 7 at the end of which the top two clubs will qual­i­fy to the knock­out-out stage.

<For­tune turns provider in Mem­phis FC 3-0 win>

Na­tion­al mid­field­er An­dre "Dre" For­tune set up the sec­ond goal for team-mate Sky­lar Thomas as the Mem­phis 901 FC led by T&T’s Le­ston Paul took a 3-0 vic­to­ry against the New York Red Bulls II at MSU Soc­cer Park on Sun­day.

With the vic­to­ry, Mem­phis moved with­in three points of the play­off po­si­tions in the Unit­ed Soc­cer League Cham­pi­onship’s Cen­tral Di­vi­sion with three games in hand on cur­rent fourth-placed side OKC En­er­gy FC.

Both teams opened en­er­get­i­cal­ly, and Mem­phis al­most had an ear­ly chance when for­mer T&T Un­der-17 and Un­der-20 Fi­fa World Cup cap­tain Paul sent a sweep­ing ball in­to the space be­hind a high Red Bulls II back line on­ly for de­fend­er Kyle Za­jec to shep­herd the ball to safe­ty as Kyle Mur­phy went in pur­suit.

901 FC be­gan to gain the up­per hand af­ter the open­ing ten min­utes, though, and in the 20th minute the vis­i­tors were award­ed a penal­ty kick af­ter a hand­ball in the box which Mur­phy slot­ted in­to the bot­tom-right cor­ner as Red Bulls II goal­keep­er AJ Mar­cuc­ci dove the op­po­site way.

Mem­phis added its sec­ond goal of the day five min­utes lat­er as cen­ter back Sky­lar Thomas rose high­est to head home a cor­ner kick by T&T in­ter­na­tion­al For­tune on the right in­to the right cor­ner of the net.

For­tune al­so added his name to the score­sheet with a low shot from a free-kick on the top-left edge of the penal­ty area to the bot­tom-right cor­ner of the net, but Mar­cuc­ci made a good save.

With 12 min­utes to go, how­ev­er, Mur­phy struck again to seal vic­to­ry for the vis­i­tors as af­ter Michael Salazar in­ter­cept­ed a clear­ance in the New York half he quick­ly found fel­low sec­ond-half sub­sti­tute Rashawn Dal­ly.