Naparima, Presentation set for another South derby

Na­pari­ma, the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) Pre­mier Di­vi­sion cham­pi­on, com­fort­ably de­feat­ed Pleas­antville Sec­ondary, 4-0 and will re­sume its ri­val­ry with Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, which edged St Bene­dict’s Col­lege, 1-0, in the lat­er match.

It was Kodel Fron­tin get­ting the open­ing item for Na­pari­ma as ear­ly as the ninth minute putting the for­mer South Zone In­ter­col cham­pi­on on the back­foot. Pleas­antville tried to get an equalis­er but it nev­er came.

On the oth­er end though, Ship­ley did well in putting his team up 2-0, find­ing the back of the net in the 38th minute. The score re­mained un­changed when the teams went in at the half.

As in the first half, Na­pari­ma got a goal in ear­ly on with Ship­ley re­turn­ing five min­utes in­to the sec­ond ses­sion to give his team a 3-0 ad­van­tage.

Pleas­antville's strug­gle con­tin­ued and was un­able to lessen its deficit de­spite do­ing well to hold off the Na­pari­ma at­tack lat­er on in the sec­ond half. That was un­til na­tion­al Un­der-20 play­er Mark Ramdeen put the "ic­ing on the cake" in the 72nd minute and earned Na­pari­ma, the first spot in the fi­nal.

How­ev­er, it was not as easy for the oth­er fi­nal­ist, Pre­sen­ta­tion, which did enough to get the nar­row one-goal vic­to­ry over St Bene­dict's in the "Clas­sic" South Zone In­ter­Col ri­val­ry.

The match ap­peared to be head­ing to a goal­less draw and like­ly to be de­cid­ed by penal­ty kicks but Jaiye Shep­pard came to the res­cue, scor­ing the win­ner for Pre­sen­ta­tion in the 86th minute, to grab the oth­er va­cant spot in the fi­nale, which is card­ed for Mon­day

Up in North, host team, East Mu­cu­rapo proved to a wor­thy op­po­nent for Trin­i­ty Col­lege Mo­ka, hold­ing them to a goal­less draw at the end of reg­u­la­tion and added on time.

How­ev­er, it was Trin­i­ty Mo­ka pre­vail­ing with a 5-4 win on penal­ty kicks.

Trin­i­ty Mo­ka will meet St An­tho­ny's Col­lege in the North Zone In­ter­Col fi­nal af­ter the lat­ter cool­ly sealed a 4-1 over Queen's Roy­al Col­lege (QRC) at Ser­pen­tine Road in Port-of-Spain.

To­day, the Cen­tral Zone In­ter­Col semi­fi­nals will take place at Cou­va East ground, with the open­ing match of the dou­ble­head­er kick­ing off at 3 pm.