Ter­minix La Hor­quet­ta Rangers were crowned cham­pi­ons of the As­cen­sion Foot­ball League with­out break­ing a sweat af­ter the lone re­main­ing chal­lenger Po­lice FC was held to a goal­less draw by De­porti­vo Point Fortin at the St James Po­lice Bar­racks Train­ing Ground, Long Cir­cu­lar Road, St James on Sun­day.

Go­ing in­to the match, Rangers led the ten-club ta­ble with 42 points from 16 match­es while De­fence Force was sec­ond with 35 points, but had no chance of re­claim­ing the ti­tle they won in the 2019 in­au­gur­al com­pe­ti­tion as they trailed by sev­en points with two match­es left.

How­ev­er, third-placed Po­lice (33 points) had a slim chance to win the ti­tle but need­ed to beat fourth-placed De­porti­vo Point Fortin while hop­ing Rangers suf­fer de­feats in their two re­main­ing fix­tures.

But it was not to be yes­ter­day as the Law­men failed to come away with the much-need­ed three points to ex­tend the ti­tle bat­tle for an­oth­er week at least as they can now on­ly reach 40 points should they win their two re­main­ing match­es.

By de­thron­ing De­fence Force as cham­pi­ons, Rangers pock­et­ed the $100,000 win­ners’ prize while the trio of De­fence Force, Po­lice and De­porti­vo Point Fortin, fourth with 31 points will bat­tle down to the fi­nal rounds of match­es for the sec­ond and third place cash prizes of $50,000, and $25,000, re­spec­tive­ly.

Com­ment­ing on his team’s tri­umph, Rangers Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor and the brain­child be­hind the As­cen­sion Foot­ball Tour­na­ment, Richard Fer­gu­son first lament­ed the fact that his club was made to work very hard to achieve their tar­get of win­ning the ti­tle.

Fer­gu­son said, “It was a very hard-fought tour­na­ment and I must give cred­it to all the par­tic­i­pat­ing teams who have made the com­pe­ti­tion the suc­cess that it has turned out to be. Spe­cial men­tion must al­so be made to the coach­es of De­fence Force, Po­lice, and De­porti­vo Point Fortin for push­ing us to the max­i­mum as well as they have been all very well coached, and it has been re­flect­ed by the foot­ball which has been on dis­play.”

Fer­gu­son, who took reigns of the club four years ago fol­low­ing its pur­chase from the now de­ceased Richard Fakoory in 2019 was al­so full of praise for the me­dia cov­er­age of the com­pe­ti­tion say­ing, “Tele­vi­sion has, with­out doubt, made a great im­pact on the tour­na­ment as all the match­es were streamed, and any­one want­i­ng to re­watch the match­es can do so as they have been archived.”

“The qual­i­ty of cov­er­age we have got­ten through­out the Caribbean and via Sports­max has al­so played a key role in pro­mot­ing the foot­ball to high­er lev­els and in gen­er­al I am very please with the lo­cal print (news­pa­per) cov­er­age as well.”

Look­ing ahead, Fer­gu­son said plans are un­der­way for the stag­ing of the first-ever As­cen­sion Caribbean Cup Tour­na­ment from Oc­to­ber 21 which will in­volve the top three clubs in this year’s tour­na­ment com­ing against Ja­maica’s Har­bour View and one club each from Bar­ba­dos and Grena­da.

On Sat­ur­day night, Moru­ga FC got their first win of the sea­son while Cunu­pia FC al­so picked up a vic­to­ry in a dou­ble-head­er at the Ari­ma Mu­nic­i­pal Sta­di­um, Ari­ma on Sat­ur­day night.

How­ev­er, the talk of the night was the Der­nelle Mas­call-coached Moru­ga FC out­fit who af­ter 15 match­es fi­nal­ly got among the win col­umn with a 3-1 de­feat of Cen­tral Soc­cer World.

Af­ter a goal­less first 45 min­utes, Ray­on King Al­leyne broke the dead­lock for Moru­ga in the 52nd minute and nine min­utes lat­er Ronal­do Ed­wards dou­bled the ad­van­tage for the team from “deep south”.

But with 15 min­utes left in the con­test, sub­sti­tute Leroy Whyle re­duced the mar­gin to 2-1 for Cen­tral Soc­cer World, on­ly for Kervelle Turn­er to make cer­tain of the team’s first vic­to­ry in 16 match­es for Moru­ga with his 87th-minute strike.

De­spite the win, Moru­ga re­mained at the foot of the ten-club stand­ings with four points from 15 match­es, eight adrift of Cunu­pia FC who have a match in hand.

And in Sat­ur­day’s sec­ond con­test, for­mer na­tion­al strik­er, Trevin Ceasar scored in each half to lead Cunu­pia FC to a come-from-be­hind 3-1 win over Re­al West Fort.

Re­al West Fort went ahead as ear­ly as the 11th minute through Josi­mar Bel­grave, but Cae­sar hit back for Cunu­pia in the 36th minute to send both teams in at the half-time in­ter­val locked at 1-all.

Cae­sar grabbed his sec­ond of the match in the 69th minute for the first lead of the match for Cunu­pia while Haile Farell com­plet­ed the turn-around with the third item in the 82nd to join AC Port-of-Spain in 18 points.