St Bene­dict’s Col­lege went through the for­mal­i­ty of an In­ter­Col-prepar­ing en­counter with Mir­a­cle Min­istries in the Pre­mier­ship Di­vi­sion of the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) on Tuesday (Oc­to­ber 29), hav­ing al­ready se­cured the ti­tle with an unas­sail­able ad­van­tage af­ter Sat­ur­day’s (Oc­to­ber 26) round of match­es. 

Their 9-0 de­mo­li­tion at the Ma­haica Oval, Point Fortin on Tues­day pushed them to 38 points at the top of the stand­ings, se­cur­ing the 2024 SS­FL league ti­tle. 

How­ev­er, the school awaits a rul­ing from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion about the sta­tus of its in­stru­men­tal strik­er, Der­rel “Zoom, Zoom” Gar­cia, who was a Form 3 stu­dent but has been al­leged to be out of school for more than 15 months with­out the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s ap­proval, rais­ing the ques­tion about his el­i­gi­bil­i­ty as a stu­dent at the start of the SS­FL sea­son on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2024. 

St Bene­dict’s tes­ti­mo­ny will hold the draw­ing card on whether the South­ern­ers, known as a su­per­pow­er in school foot­ball, will be pe­nalised or whether they will lift the ti­tle this year. A teacher at the school de­nied com­ment re­cent­ly, say­ing they are al­low­ing the min­istry to con­duct its in­ves­ti­ga­tion. 

Gar­cia again led the way for the South­ern­ers with a beaver-trick (five goals) in a hu­mil­i­at­ing re­sult for the Cen­tral School. Gar­cia, con­sid­ered one of the bet­ter play­ers in the league, has scored al­most every time the South­ern­ers took the field and has tak­en his tal­ly to date to 16 goals. Apart from Gar­cia, the win al­so came cour­tesy of a dou­ble strike from the boot of Josi­ah Ochoa and a goal apiece from Ethan Trot­man and Eli­jah David. 

How­ev­er, Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, sec­ond on the 16-team stand­ings, moved to 32 points af­ter a 2-0 tri­umph over pre­vi­ous­ly un­beat­en Ari­ma North Sec­ondary at the Ari­ma Velo­drome. Coach Wayne Shep­pard’s charges were hop­ing to end the sea­son with an un­blem­ished record, but they buck­led to the at­tack­ing force of the Mu­cu­rapo Road boys, who co­in­ci­den­tal­ly were rel­e­gat­ed un­der him a few years ago. 

The de­fend­ing cham­pi­on showed lit­tle to no fear in the den of the Di­al Dy­namos, a team that stood firm in all de­part­ments of the game this sea­son. But when the hard-hit­ting Ca­den Tre­strail lined up in front of the ball for a 38th-minute free kick, it didn’t seem to cause any con­cern un­til he drove the ball hard and low goal­wards, which goal­keep­er Jadon-Paul Alexan­der thought he had picked up. 

In­stead, it took a de­flec­tion off one of his de­fend­ers be­fore it flew past him in the back of the nets for a 1-0 ad­van­tage. 

The home team came close to the equalis­er a minute from the half­time in­ter­val when Tyrell Sta­ple­ton turned nice­ly on a ball that was served to him in the cen­tre of the Fa­ti­ma goal area, but he did not con­nect with the vol­ley, and the ball rolled harm­less­ly to the Fa­ti­ma goal­keep­er, Shameal O’Bri­an. 

Fa­ti­ma then sealed the win in the 71st minute when over­lap­ping de­fend­er and cap­tain Yohance Ather­ton was picked out at the back post to con­vert a left-side cor­ner from Mi­ca­iah Leach. 

Hav­ing se­cured the open­ing NGC Su­per Cup, the Mu­cu­rapo men can on­ly stay on course for their tar­get­ed four ti­tles this sea­son, with the help of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.