Der­rel Gar­cia scored his third goal in two match­es since his re­turn from Spain to in­spire St Bene­dict’s Col­lege to a 2-1 come-from-be­hind win over St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege in a resched­uled match of the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) Boys Pre­mier­ship Di­vi­sion at West­moor­ings on Monday.

With the win, their sev­enth in a row af­ter draw­ing goal­less with Ari­ma North Sec­ondary in their open­er, St Bene­dict’s Col­lege, the 2022 cham­pi­ons car­ried their points tal­ly to 22 from eight match­es at the top of the 16-team stand­ings, six clear of de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Fa­ti­ma Col­lege.

At West­moor­ings, St. Bene­dict’s be­gan the live­li­er of both teams, forc­ing the host goal­keep­er Josi­ah Mor­ris in­to a few ear­ly saves.

How­ev­er, against the run, the ‘West­moor­ing Tigers’ went ahead when the nip­py An­dell Fras­er surged down the right side and whipped in a cross that was missed by two St. Bene­dict’s Col­lege de­fend­ers and fell to an un­marked Morde­cai Ford at the far post, whose one-time left shot back across goal beat goal­keep­er Thane De­venish.

With nine min­utes left in the first half, Fras­er thought he had dou­bled the lead for the host when he capped off a neat build-up by round­ing De­venish and fir­ing in­to an open net, but the goal was un­con­vinc­ing­ly ruled out for off-side by the ref­er­ee, Char­l­ize Hood.

Three min­utes lat­er, Fras­er and Jean-Marc Thomas then had chances to ex­tend the lead for St. An­tho­ny’s, but they were de­nied by the com­bi­na­tion of De­venish and de­fend­ers Lyshaun Mor­ris and Adam Pierre with last ditch tack­les in­side the six-yard box.

Two min­utes lat­er, St. Bene­dict’s would lev­el the score when Pierre’s right-foot­ed free from on the top right-hand cor­ner of the 18-yard box took a wicked de­flec­tion off a de­fend­er in the St. An­tho­ny’s four-man wall and sneaked in at the first post past a flat-foot­ed Josi­ah Mor­ris in the St. An­tho­ny’s goal.

Sev­en min­utes in­to an even­ly matched sec­ond half, Gar­cia took ad­van­tage of some slack mark­ing by the St. An­tho­ny’s de­fend­ers to a free-kick and col­lect­ed a short pass be­fore he drilled a right-foot­ed shot in­to the far cor­ner to put the vis­i­tors ahead.

Both teams then cre­at­ed a few half-chances to add to their tal­ly, but with 12 min­utes in the match, De­venish came to the res­cue for his team with a stun­ning point-blank save off a close range blast from Thomas.

St An­tho­ny’s was then hand­ed a life­line when St. Bene­dict’s de­fend­er Sahrai Mitchell was shown a sec­ond yel­low card by ref­er­ee Hood to leave his team to con­test the re­main­ing min­utes with ten, which they did suc­cess­ful­ly in the end to pre­serve their un­beat­en start to the cam­paign.

Al­so yes­ter­day, Eli­jah Bap­tiste scored in the 77th minute to se­cure a 2-1 win for St. Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary away to Spey­side Sec­ondary. 

Abra­ham Kirk had giv­en St. Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary the lead in the 11th minute be­fore Shy­on George equalised for the host in the 61st, on­ly for Bap­tiste to grab the win­ner for the vis­i­tors, now eighth on the ta­ble with ten points from eight match­es.

Mon­day’s Re­sults

St Au­gus­tine Sec 2 (Abra­ham Kirk 11th, Eli­jah Bap­tiste 77th) vs Spey­side Sec 1 (Shy­on George 61st)

St Bene­dict’s Col­lege 2 (Adam Pierre 43rd, Der­rel Gar­cia 53rd) vs St An­tho­ny’s 1 (Morde­cai Ford 18th)

Lat­est SS­FL Pre­mier Di­vi­sion stand­ings

Pos Teams P W D L F A Pts

1 St Bene­dict’s 8 7 1 0 14 5 22

2 Fa­ti­ma 8 5 1 2 20 7 16

3 Pre­sen­ta­tion 7 5 1 1 15 3 16

4 Ari­ma North 8 3 5 0 12 4 14

5 QRC 8 4 1 3 11 8 13

6 St An­tho­ny’s 7 4 0 3 15 9 12

7 Na­pari­ma 6 3 2 1 13 5 11

8 St Au­gus­tine 7 3 1 3 7 12 10

9 St Mary’s 8 3 1 4 8 16 10

10 San Juan North 8 3 0 5 12 13 9

11 Mal­ick 7 2 2 3 13 13 8

12 Sig­nal Hill 7 2 2 3 14 16 8

13 East Mu­cu­rapo 7 2 0 5 5 9 6

14 Trin­i­ty East 8 2 0 6 12 16 6

15 Spey­side 6 1 1 4 8 16 4

16 Mir­a­cle Min­istries 7 1 0 6 2 26 3

To­mor­row’s match­es:

Na­pari­ma Col­lege vs Spey­side High, Lewis Street, San F’do, 3.30 pm.

Sig­nal Hill Sec vs Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, Sig­nal Hill, 4 pm

Mal­ick Sec vs San Juan North, West­moor­ings, 4 pm

Ari­ma North Sec v Mir­a­cle Min­istries PHS, Ari­ma Mu­nic­i­pal Sta­di­um, 4 pm

Pre­sen­ta­tion (San F’do) vs St Mary’s Col­lege, Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um, Mara­bel­la, 4 pm

Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege vs St Bene­dict’s Col­lege, QRC Grd, St Clair, 4 pm

St Au­gus­tine Sec vs East Mu­cu­rapo Sec, War­ren Street, St Au­gus­tine, 4 pm

Trin­i­ty Col­lege East v St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege, Trinci­ty, 4 pm