De­fend­ing Co­ca-Co­la Na­tion­al In­ter­Col cham­pi­on Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, Na­pari­ma and San Juan North re­mained un­beat­en, but Mal­ick Sec­ondary tast­ed de­feat and dropped points again as the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion of the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League con­tin­ued Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon.

En­ter­ing as the firm favourites to win, the Mal­ick play­ers have on­ly them­selves to blame as they thor­ough­ly out­played their op­po­nents but count­less woe­ful and waste­ful ef­forts in front of the op­po­nent's goal – in­clud­ing a penal­ty in the 83rd minute which de­fend­er Ac­k­eem James blast­ed over the cross­bar, saw them slip from the un­beat­en ranks.

The un­de­feat­ed teams took full ad­van­tage and moved three points fur­ther ahead, with Na­pari­ma ham­mer­ing East Mu­cu­rapo 7-0, as ex­pect­ed, San Juan North edg­ing past Queen's Roy­al Col­lege 2-1 cour­tesy of goals from Ja­heem Dan­clair in the 39th minute and Lin­dell Sween in the 75th, while Fa­ti­ma got dou­ble strikes from Aidan De Gannes and Jonathan Ma­son in crush­ing Pleas­antville Sec­ondary 5-0 at their Mu­cu­rapo Road home ground.

At their Ser­pen­tine Road fa­cil­i­ty, Mal­ick, who re­turned to top-flight SS­FL foot­ball just last year, en­tered as heavy three or four-goal favourites and this pre­dic­tion seemed on track when they opened the scor­ing af­ter just sev­en min­utes from Oba Samuel.

The ex­pect­ed rout seemed on as Mal­ick dom­i­nat­ed the pro­ceed­ing for the re­main­der of the half, cre­at­ing chances in abun­dance, but just could not con­vert to add to their lead and were stunned when it was the To­ba­go-based school who was next on the score sheet to lev­el the game at 1-1, with Nkosi Quashie send­ing the goal­keep­er the wrong way in con­vert­ing from the spot af­ter Omar Daniel was bun­dled over in the area.

Mal­ick re­spond­ed well and con­tin­ued to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties and it was on­ly out­stand­ing work by the Spey­side cus­to­di­an Makaya Tay­lor, who kept them at bay, with one par­tic­u­lar­ly spec­tac­u­lar play see­ing him high to his right to keep out a dip­ping left-side cross that seemed des­tined for goal. Their waste­ful­ness was high­light­ed as even when the ball fell invit­ing­ly to Josante Dun­can on top of the area, he flashed his shot well over the cross­bar.

Af­ter the break, the Mal­ick boys again cre­at­ed chances in bunch­es but were again waste­ful as they all came to noth­ing with Samuel, the scor­er of the open­ing goal, be­ing es­pe­cial­ly guilty and squan­der­ing a gold­en chance mid­way in the half when the ball rolled nice­ly for him from a won­der­ful build-up, but he dragged his at­tempt wide of an open goal.

They were then giv­en a mas­sive life­line in their quest for max­i­mum points and to re­main un­beat­en when in the 83rd minute Samuel was brought down in the six-yard box and the ref­er­ee point­ed to the penal­ty spot. James caught the miss­ing bug and blast­ed high over the bar.

Mal­ick was made to pay dear­ly for sev­er­al missed chances, with James who now ap­peared un­set­tled af­ter the penal­ty miss, fum­bled the ball in­to his own net from a Spey­side at­tack in the 92nd minute, when a share of the points seemed on the cards.

Spey­side man­ager­ess, Kristal Grif­fith, said her charges came with a plan to move up the stand­ing by get­ting max­i­mum points and was elat­ed that they did it.

Sat­ur­day's re­sults

Mal­ick 1 (Oba Samuel 7th) vs Spey­side 2 (Nkosi Quashie 25th pen, own goal (90+2)

San Juan North 2 (Ja­heem Dan­clair 39th, Lin­dell Sween 75th) vs QRC 1 (Micagh Nel­son 83rd)

Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege 3 (own goal 61st, Vaughn Clement 83rd, 90th) vs Ch­agua­nas North 0

Na­pari­ma 7 (own goal, akiel Vasprey 27th, 51st, Jabari Forbes 52nd, Tevin Pan­tor 62nd, Xar­i­on France 79th, Nathaniel O'Gar­ro 80th) vs East Mu­cu­rapo 0

Fa­ti­ma Col­lege 5 (Aidan De Gannes 2, Jonathan Ma­son 2, Chris­t­ian Bai­ley) vs Pleas­antville 0

St An­tho­ny's Col­lege 3 (An­dell Fras­er 2, Theo Cravador 1) vs CIC 0

St Bene­dict's Col­lege 1 vs Ari­ma North 1

Cur­rent stand­ings:

Po­si­tions*Teams*P*W*D*L*F*A*Pts

1*Na­pari­ma Col­lege*4*4*0*0*29*2*12

2*Fa­ti­ma Col­lege*4*4*0*0*18*0*12

3*San Juan North*4*4*0*0*13*4*12

4*Pre­sen­ta­tion*4*2*1*1*4*2*7

5*Mal­ick*4*2*0*2*14*4*6

6*Ari­ma North*4*1*3*0*10*2*6

7*Spey­side Sec*4*2*0*2*6*5*6

8*QRC*4*2*0*2*4*5*6

9*St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege*4*2*0*2*5*9*6

10*East Mu­cu­rapo*4*2*0*2*3*13*6

11*St Bene­dict’s Col­lege*4*1*1*2*7*6*4

12*St Mary’s Col­lege*4*1*0*3*11*14*3

13*Ch­agua­nas North*4*1*0*3*1*23*3

14*Trin­i­ty East*3*0*1*2*2*4*1

15*Bish­op’s High*3*0*0*3*1*7*0

16*Pleas­antville*4*0*0*4*0*27*0