Cen­tral cham­pi­ons Harlem Strik­ers are look­ing for­ward to the com­ing 2024/2025 foot­ball sea­son which will in­clude their par­tic­i­pa­tion in Tier 2 of the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League (TTPFL) and their de­fence of the League and Knock-Out ti­tles at the Cen­tral Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CFA) com­pe­ti­tions.

The club got off to a rough start last sea­son with no fund­ing to as­sist their op­er­a­tions. Gre­go­ry Mc Sween, the team's man­ag­er ad­mit­ted that it was on­ly due to the sup­port of the Prime Min­is­ter's Sports and Cul­tur­al Grant that the club lift­ed it­self and at­tained the ti­tles it was ca­pa­ble of win­ning.

Mc­Sween did not re­veal the grant amount but made it clear it helped his team with re­fresh­ments, uni­forms, trav­el, and oth­er mis­cel­la­neous ex­pens­es that the club need­ed.

Fol­low­ing a first sea­son in Tier 2 of the TTPFL in which they fin­ished third, the Cen­tral club, un­der coach De­vorn Jorsling, a for­mer na­tion­al and De­fence Force strik­er, copped the ti­tle for the first time by beat­ing De­fence Force in the fi­nal 2-0 at the Ari­ma Velo­drome in Au­gust.

The vic­to­ry lift­ed the team there­after and they moved on to claim the Hugo Fran­cis Knock-Out Cup at Ed­in­burgh 500 Grounds by edg­ing Cen­tral Soc­cer World (CSW) 3-2 in the fi­nal.

The League ti­tle, how­ev­er, came cour­tesy of their tri­umph in a Big Four Play-Off which end­ed with a 3-1 vic­to­ry for the Strik­ers over Com­padres. Ka­reem Bap­tiste led the scor­ing with a brace in the 19th and 69th min­utes, while an own-goal from Je­van Stew­art added the third for the Strik­ers.

Mc­Sween told Guardian Me­dia Sports that hard work and dis­ci­pline were the at­trib­ut­es that led to their suc­cess­es last sea­son.

"Along with the as­sis­tance of the PM Sports and Cul­tur­al fund, it was a to­tal­ly dis­ci­plined per­for­mance by the team. The play­ers were hun­gry for suc­cess and when they got that fi­nan­cial help, every­thing worked to­geth­er per­fect­ly. This sea­son we are aim­ing at a re­peat, but we al­so want to be pro­mot­ed to Tier 1 of the TTPFL," Mc­Sween said.

"At present, we're work­ing on strength­en­ing our team this sea­son, we will look to re­cruit a few play­ers, but our on­ly con­cern is get­ting a spon­sor for the sea­son."