Protest win puts Prison FC's title celebrations on ice

A day af­ter or­gan­is­ers hand­ed the Prison of­fi­cers the ti­tle came word that sec­ond-placed Bethel Unit­ed FC, cur­rent­ly on 25 points, have won an ap­peal against Po­lice from a No­vem­ber 10 en­counter at the Mt Gomery Recre­ation Ground in To­ba­go. Bethel won that game 4-1 but the win was giv­en to the Law­men on the ba­sis of a protest by them that the ground was not suit­able for play.

Bethel, it is un­der­stood, ap­pealed the re­sult and were yes­ter­day award­ed the win and three goals, which took them to 28 points, just one point be­hind Prison and now still with their game against Matu­ra Re­Unit­ed to be played.

The Prison of­fi­cers have 29 points with no more games to play. This means the To­bag­o­ni­ans will have to beat sixth-placed Matu­ra Re­Unit­ed in the fi­nal match at a date and time to be de­cid­ed. Should that match end in a tie, the Prison of­fi­cers could have the up­per hand in se­cur­ing the ti­tle based on a su­pe­ri­or goal dif­fer­ence of 26, com­pared to Bethel’s nine.

On Sun­day, the Prison Ser­vice ap­peared to have moved out of reach of their clos­est ri­vals on 29 points de­spite a 2-2 draw with Po­lice cour­tesy goals from Ri­car­do Al­leyne and Nathan Julien