Fa­ti­ma Col­lege’s un­beat­en streak in the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion of the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) was snapped by a pack of vi­cious tigers—St. An­tho­ny’s Col­lege at West­moor­ings, on Wednes­day. 

Goals on each side of the half by Jean-Marc Thomas and An­dell Fras­er were enough to earn the Tigers max­i­mum points, de­spite a cheeky goal from Ja­haem Bai­ley in the 68th minute. 

With two wins and as many loss­es to their name, the Tigers, play­ing at home, ab­sorbed ear­ly Fa­ti­ma at­tacks be­fore their blood scent kicked in. 

A per­fect dis­play of counter-at­tack­ing foot­ball as the Tigers trans­ferred from de­fence to at­tack with a long ball that set Thomas on a one-on-one with goal­keep­er Shameal O’Brien in the Fa­ti­ma goal. 

How­ev­er, a pos­si­ble trip on de­fend­er Liam Good­ing in the 23rd minute trou­bled the vis­i­tors, though the ref­er­ee waved play on. Thomas then lift­ed the ball over the ad­vanc­ing cus­to­di­an for a 1-0 ad­van­tage. 

It was not the start that the Fa­ti­ma men were hop­ing for, though both the ref­er­ee and his as­sis­tant met briefly and agreed there was no in­fringe­ment. 

The goal lift­ed St. An­tho­ny’s spir­it and con­fi­dence there­after, caus­ing them to mount nu­mer­ous at­tacks on the Fa­ti­ma goal area. 

And in the 27th minute, it was on­ly the ac­ro­bat­ic bril­liance of goal­keep­er O’Brien that pre­vent­ed a curl­ing at­tempt from Fras­er from go­ing two goals up. 

It tilt­ed the game in favour of the home team, who en­joyed the po­si­tion of as­cen­den­cy in pos­ses­sion. How­ev­er, as the game ap­proached the halfway in­ter­val, Fa­ti­ma near­ly squeezed in the equalis­er cour­tesy of their trade­mark buildup down the right flank that end­ed at the feet of that Savio Year­wood in­side the penal­ty area. 

Still, with the goal at his mer­cy, he hit the ball wide of the goal­post, tak­ing the teams to the half with the home team ahead 1-0. 

The Tigers goalie Josi­ah Mor­ris held on to a snap-shot from Ca­den Tre­strail to pre­serve their ad­van­tage soon af­ter the break, but his op­po­site num­ber could not fol­low him in the 66th minute. 

This time it was Fras­er who was picked out with a ball that was served to him from deep in his de­fen­sive back­line. And in­stead of run­ning at the de­fend­ers, Fras­er, in on­ly his first match for the Tigers, curled the ball high in­to the roof of the net for a 2-0 mar­gin. 

Two min­utes lat­er, though, the vis­i­tors got a con­so­la­tion item. Michael Chaves, the 2023 play­er of the year, served to an un­marked Josi­ah Gob­in on the left side of St. An­tho­ny’s de­fence to quick­ly cen­tre for Bai­ley to cheek­i­ly back-heel the ball in­to an open goal for a 2-1 mar­gin. 

Fa­ti­ma came close to the equalis­er a sec­ond time, cour­tesy of a Levi Smith right side cross, which Chaves con­nect­ed with, but goal­keep­er Mor­ris tipped it over to as­sure his team the vic­to­ry. 

De­spite the loss, how­ev­er, Fa­ti­ma still main­tained the top spot in the stand­ings with a bet­ter goal dif­fer­ence to St. Bene­dict’s Col­lege, who de­feat­ed San Juan North 1-0. 

Mean­while, in To­ba­go, ref­er­ee Keon Yorke pre­vent­ed the much-await­ed To­ba­go Der­by be­tween Spey­side and Sig­nal Hill at the Spey­side Recre­ation Ground from play­ing. 

Coach Ker­ry Lynch said Yorke ar­rived for the match ap­prox­i­mate­ly an hour ear­ly but was en­raged when his as­sis­tants Ged­des John and Ash­ford Ben­jamin ar­rived 10 min­utes be­fore the start of the game. Ac­cord­ing to Lynch, with both teams al­ready in­spect­ed and the game ready for kick­off, Yorke walked off the field af­ter ap­pear­ing to be un­hap­py af­ter a brief con­ver­sa­tion with his as­sis­tants. 

RE­SULTS

East Mu­cu­rapo 2 (Kadeem Mor­ri­son, Makai Sim­mons) vs Trin­i­ty Col­lege 1 (Dex­ter Croal)

Naps 6 (J Ro­driguez 2, Xar­i­on France, M Clement, I Joseph, J Coop­er) vs Mir­a­cle Min­istries 0

Pre­sen­ta­tion 0 vs Ari­ma North 0

QRC 2 (Stephon James, Ja­sai Theophilus) vs Mal­ick 0

Spey­side vs Sig­nal Hill (Game didn’t play- ref­er­ee leaves field)

St An­tho­ny’s 2 (Jean-Mark Thomas 23rd, An­dell Fras­er 66th) vs Fa­ti­ma 1 (Ja­heam Bai­ley 77th)

St Bene­dict’s 1 vs San Juan 0

CIC 2 (Joshua Charlerie, Kyle Phillip) vs St Au­gus­tine 0

LAT­EST STAND­INGS

Pos*Teams*P*W*D*L*F*A*Pts

1*Fa­ti­ma*7*5*1*1*19*4*16

2*St Bene­dict’s*6*5*1*0*9*3*16

3*Pre­sen­ta­tion*6*4*1*1*10*3*13

4*Na­pari­ma*6*3*2*1*13*5*11

5*Ari­ma North*7*2*5*0*10*3*11

6*QRC*7*3*1*3*9*7*10

7*St An­tho­ny’s*5*3*0*2*11*6*9

8*San Juan North*7*3*0*4*11*11*9

9*Mal­ick*7*2*2*3*13*13*8

10*Sig­nal Hill*6*2*2*2*13*14*8

11*St Mary’s*7*2*1*4*7*16*7

12*East Mu­cu­rapo*6*2*0*4*5*8*6

13*Trin­i­ty East*7*2*0*5*12*15*6

14* Spey­side*4*1*1*2*7*9*4

15* St Au­gus­tine*5*1*1*3*4*11*4

16*Mir­a­cle Min­istries*7*1*0*6*2*26*3