Riley's goal saves Pres

The re­sult en­sured the south­ern­ers main­tained their sum­mit po­si­tion on the stand­ings on 19 points but on a bet­ter goal dif­fer­ence to ri­val Na­pari­ma Col­lege, with a plus 14.

Na­pari­ma dropped two key points, two rounds of match­es ago but yes­ter­day the team's 1-0 tri­umph over Cara­pichaima East, com­ing from Seon Ship­p­ley's 78th-minute item, pushed "Naps" to 19 points with a goal dif­fer­en­tial of plus 11.

At St Clair how­ev­er, the home team start­ed strong­ly when John Paul Rochford's thun­der­ous dri­ve from the free kick can­noned off the cross­bar in the 25th minute and in­to the path of An­fer­nee Stokes to slot in for the open­er. The Roy­alians would have on­ly them­selves to blame for not adding at least an­oth­er goal lat­er on, as chances went a beg­ging.

With five min­utes to go in the match, how­ev­er, Ri­ley struck. QRC goal­keep­er Jacques Poon Kong sent a weak at­tempt from a goal kick that was in­ter­cept­ed on the flank. And with the Roy­alians' de­fence strug­gling to get back, Ri­ley was pre­sent­ed with the sim­ple task of tap­ping in when the ball ap­proached him from a cross.

At Guaracara Park in Pointe-a-Pierre, St Bene­dict's Col­lege trio of Keon Boney, Jaycee Parath and Aaron Rod­ney turned their team's mis­for­tune of en­ter­ing the match with the least amount of goals scored for the sea­son, to a more than con­vinc­ing 4-0 thrash­ing of Trin­i­ty Col­lege Mo­ka.

Boney, the even­tu­al man-of-the-match, was in su­perb form, first rac­ing on to a through ball to skil­ful­ly slip the ball past the on­rush­ing goalie in the 14th minute. Rod­ney lat­er gave his team a two-goal cush­ion when Boney's sting­ing dri­ve from way out was par­ried in­to the path of Rod­ney to fire in.

Mo­ments lat­er, Rod­ney turned provider when he stormed down the right flank and de­liv­ered per­fect­ly for Parath to take aim and place the ball to the far post.

Trin­i­ty could have pulled a goal back in the 70th minute when sub­sti­tute mid­field­er Kai Phillips turned away from his mark­er in the cen­tre of the park and un­leashed a thump­ing shot that struck the cross­bar be­fore go­ing to safe­ty.

But Boney sealed the win in the 76th minute. Parath's telling pass from the left put Boney on a one-and-one with the goal­keep­er, and he fired pre­cise­ly in­to the bot­tom right cor­ner for the win.

SAT­UR­DAY'S RE­SULTS

QRC 1 (An­fer­nee Stokes) vs Pre­sen­ta­tion 1 (Jor­dan Ri­ley)

St Au­gus­tine 3 (Kesean St Rose [2], Rivaldo Coryat) vs Bish­op's High 1 (Adriel George)

Na­pari­ma 1 (Seon Ship­p­ley) vs Cara­pichaima 0

East Mu­cu­rapo 1 (Zion McLeod 4-Pen) vs Trin­i­ty East 3 (Chris­t­ian Ran­some 56, Elijah Joseph 72 own-goal, Tyrique Suther­land 90+3)

Fa­ti­ma Col­lege 0 vs San Juan North 1 (Jerry Morris)

Va­len­cia 3 (Jardel Carter 48, Terron Luke 64, Omeil Weekes 84) vs St An­tho­ny's 2 (Jesse Williams 54, Haile Beck­les 89)

St Bene­dict's 4 (Keon Boney 14, 75, Aaron Rodney 27, Jaycee Paras 41) vs Trin­i­ty Mo­ka 0