Compadres takes Central FA title

Strik­ers twice had to come from be­hind af­ter Nicaya Ma­hon gave Com­padres the ad­van­tage in the 15th minute in front a crowd of some 2000 fans, that in­clud­ed David John-Williams, pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, Patrice Charles, Di­rec­tor of Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion and Sport at the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs and Shymdeo Go­sine, pres­i­dent of the CFA. And in the 58th-minute new sign­ing, Obasi Jones found the nets to pro­pel the cen­tral new­com­ers to a two-goal ad­van­tage.

Harlem Strik­ers, the CFA long-serv­ing cam­paign­ers pulled a goal back in the 70th from Leroy Whyle be­fore find­ing the equal­iz­er in the 84th to send the match to a penal­ty shoot-out. But for­tunes favoured the Com­padres men, who apart from play­ing in the CFA for the first time, were re­quired to change their name from Gi­ants FC to be FI­FA/CON­CA­CAF and T&TFA com­pli­ant.

Paul David Noel, the Com­padres as­sis­tant coach and the pres­i­dent said his play­ers have worked re­al­ly hard for the ti­tle and are de­serv­ing of it. "We had a re­al­ly rough start to the sea­son, go­ing some eight match­es with­out a win, as those play­ers were not to­tal­ly com­mit­ted to the team. Be­cause of this, we sought to re­cruit play­ers who loved the game and want­ed to win, such as strik­er Obasi Jones, Makaya Clarke and Kyle For­tune among oth­ers."

"Those play­ers made the dif­fer­ence in the team, boost­ing our of­fence up as one of the strongest in the League. Our ma­jor con­cern in the fi­nal, how­ev­er, was that the de­fence would have held firm to the Strik­ers' at­tacks, which they did," Noel ex­plained.

The over­ly am­bi­tious Com­padres boss has now turned his fo­cus on the CFA Knock­out ti­tle which kicks off in De­cem­ber, as well as cre­at­ing a fam­i­ly unit among his play­ers.

"Most of the funds to run the team came from our pock­ets, so now we are hope­ful of re­ceiv­ing a spon­sor for the 2019 sea­son where play­ers can be giv­en stipends and a means of tak­ing care of their fam­i­lies. We in­tend to get jobs for them to keep them away from the vi­cious at­mos­phere of crime, and as the mean­ing of the name Com­padres, help them cre­ate hap­py fam­i­lies," Noel said.

With a ca­pac­i­ty of over 2000 sup­port­ers, the event has ex­ceed­ed many of the coun­try's top do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball match­es and was de­scribed as one of the bet­ter or­ga­nized, high qual­i­ty match­es in a long time, by top foot­ball of­fi­cials.

The day's ac­tiv­i­ties, which fea­tured a com­bi­na­tion of so­ca and gospel mu­sic, was al­so used to re­mem­ber a num­ber of play­ers from the CFA who lost their lives to crime. Clynt Tay­lor, the man charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of pro­vid­ing such qual­i­ty events, said Sun­day's sched­uled third/fourth place play-off be­tween Leeds FC and Cen­tral Soc­cer World, had to be called off due to the death of Mark Al­lard, the Leeds cap­tain re­cent­ly.

That match was re­placed by a Pre­mier Di­vi­sion League match be­tween Cen­tral Soc­cer World (CSW) and Re­al Cen­tral which CSW won 3-0, cour­tesy a dou­ble strike by Theophilus Bourne and an­oth­er from Dion Lewis.