A hat-trick from Lin­dell Sween guid­ed San Juan North Sec­ondary School to a 6-0 de­mo­li­tion of Bish­op's High School of To­ba­go in the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion of the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL), on Sat­ur­day.

Play­ing in front of his home crowd in Bourg Mu­la­tresse, Sween took his tal­ly to eight for the sea­son and kept his team at the top of the stand­ings with 21 points from eight match­es.

San Juan North, de­spite ear­ly pos­ses­sion, al­most went be­hind in the 28th minute though as Bish­op's cap­tain Ker­ron Arthur raced on to a left-side cen­tre, and from the top of the area, he failed to get the ball on tar­get, as the ball sailed high over the cross­bar.

San Juan North's lone loss last week did not af­fect their con­fi­dence or their play yes­ter­day. And from a neat buildup down the right, they re­al­ly should have got­ten the open­er in the 37th minute. Nathan Quashie who ter­rorised the Bish­op's de­fence all af­ter­noon long, de­liv­ered a pin-point cross for the un­marked Ja­heem Danclar in front of a gap­ing goal, but he some­how head­ed wide of the tar­get.

A minute lat­er, they would not be de­nied. From an al­most iden­ti­cal dis­play, Jadiel Joseph, this time taunt­ed the Bish­op's de­fence on the right side be­fore pick­ing out the un­marked Danclar to turn the ball in­to the net for the 1-0 lead.

The goal lift­ed the con­fi­dence of the home team and they tight­ened the screws on their op­po­nents in the fol­low­ing mo­ments. How­ev­er, it was on the stroke of half-time that Sween got his first goal. Danclar failed to col­lect a ball that was di­rect­ed to him from the right side and Sween, who was lurk­ing be­hind him, took a cheeky first touch be­fore blast­ing the ball past goal­keep­er Kris­teon Mc Each­nie in the Bish­op's goal.

It was Sween's sixth goal of the sea­son that took the teams to the halfway in­ter­val.

There were no re­al changes to the play when the teams re­turned to the pitch. In fact, San Juan North ex­tend­ed its ad­van­tage to 3-0 when Quashie skil­ful­ly curled the ball from a free kick past Mc Each­nie with just three min­utes gone in the sec­ond half.

Still, how­ev­er, the San Juan North men were far from the fin­ish, as Sween scored two goals in the space of three min­utes to take the tal­ly to 5-0. First, he ben­e­fit­ed from a de­fen­sive blun­der on top of the Bish­op's High area that al­lowed him to hur­dle over a de­fend­er and hit the ball low and hard past Mc Each­nie in the 83rd minute for a 4-0 ad­van­tage.

Then Sween two min­utes lat­er gal­loped on to a toe-poked pass from Joshua Lewis and calm­ly hit the ball past the Bish­op's High cus­to­di­an for his hat-trick and his team's fifth goal for which he punched the at­mos­phere dur­ing his cel­e­bra­tion.

With Bish­op's High pro­vid­ing lit­tle to no re­sis­tance, Joseph ham­mered the fi­nal item home when he was picked out free on the left side of the goal area and he drilled it low past Mc Each­nie for the 6-0 vic­to­ry.

RE­SULTS

San Juan North 6 (Lin­del Sween 45th, 83rd, 85th, Ja­heem Danclar 38th, Nathan Quashie 48th, Jadiel Joseph 91st) vs Bish­op's High 0

St An­tho­ny's 2 (Jean Marc Thomas 30th, An­dell Fras­er 78th) vs East Mu­cu­rapo 0

Bene­dict’s 5 ( Daniel Jones 4, Nathan George) vs Spey­side 0

Ch­agua­nas North 1 ( Justin Lewis) vs Fa­ti­ma 4 ( Ca­den Tre­strail 2, Luke Cor­reia, Aidan De Gannes)

Pre­sen­ta­tion 2 (Vaughn Clement 2) vs QRC 0

Mal­ick 5 (Oba Samuel 38th, Ke­ston Richards 10th, Tyrese Man­swell 27th, Jalon Matthews 53rd, Jor­dan Fer­di­nand 35th) vs CIC 2

Pleas­antville 0 vs Ari­ma 1 (Criston Gomez 16th)

Na­paraima 2 (Tevin Pan­tor, Jar­od Pas­cal) vs Trin­i­ty East 1

STAND­INGS:

Po­si­tion*Team*P*W*D*L*F*A*Pts

1*San Juan North*8*7*0*1*24*10*21

2*Fa­ti­ma*8*6*1*1*27*4*19

3*Na­pari­ma*8*6*0*2*36*7*18

4*Pre­sen­ta­tion*8*5*2*1*12*3*17

5*St An­tho­ny’s*8*5*0*3*23*12*15

6*Ari­ma North*8*4*3*1*14*5*15

7*St Bene­dict’s*8*4*2*2*16*8*14

8*Spey­side*8*4*1*3*12*13*13

9*St Mary’s*8*4*0*4*23*26*12

10*QRC*8*3*0*5*13*12*9

11*East Mu­cu­rapo*8*3*0*5*9*20*9

12*Mal­ick*8*3*0*5*21*13*9

13*Trin­i­ty East*7*1*2*4*8*11*5

14*Bish­op’s High*7*1*0*6*4*20*3

15*Ch­agua­nas North*8*1*0*7*3*46*3

16*Pleas­antville*8*0*1*7*4*39*1