CAPTAIN and midfielder Shurland David and striker Marc Borde laid out two brilliant goals yesterday as CL Financial San Juan Jabloteh popped the unbeaten run of W Connection for the biggest upset yet of the first round of the eight-team Craven A Professional Football League.
Jabloteh's victory in the clash on a dry Dr Joao Havelange Centre of Excellence ground at Macoya was only their third in seven matches.
Coupled with two draws, the San Juan team close their first-leg League campaign on 11 points in third place to W Connection who remained 18-points on top from their roll of six wins. Defence Force are second with 12 points from six matches and Joe Public fourth with ten, also with one match to play in the round.
In one other match yesterday, Police moved one spot up to sixth place after beating Point Fortin Civic Centre 2-0 on Petrotrin's Fyzabad sprawling playfield. Reginald Gibson (54th) and Kerry Franklyn (86th) sank Civic to their fifth loss in seven matches while landing the lawmen their second win.
Watched by an estimated 300-strong Mother's Day crowd and played amid a loud but unerringly rhythmic clatter of iron and steel by specially contracted music-makers, the Jabloteh/Connection clash turned sweet for the San Juan team on David's first-half goal in added time.
A veritable work-horse at midfield in tandem with Dale Saunders, Otis Seaton and Marvin Faustin, David made good Borde's assist pass into Connection's penalty-box with a right-footed blast from an acute angle that climbed past goalkeeper Anthony Clarke's despairing hands into the net.
The goal came on the one instance that Connection's otherwise airtight defence marshalled by David Atiba Charles, Rawle Fletcher, Rene Regis and Elijah Joseph tarried, perhaps expecting referee Neil Brizan's halftime whistle.
Jabloteh themselves presented a safety-first line of defence throughout with Keith Pierre, Dexter Boucher, Sean Mc Clashie backed up by 'keeper Trevor Nottingham. It nullified the running game of Connection's strike power of lanky Abdulai Conteh, Earl Jean and Wesley Webb who had sparked Connection's unmatched victory row.
Guarding their one-nil lead well into the second half, Jabloteh would go two up with 19 minutes left in the 90-minute affair. Referee Brizan ruled Fletcher guilty of upending Butler and Borde's penalty was one that he banged right-footed along the ground and way out of reach of the diving and outstretched left hand of Clarke.
"It's not a game we want to lose sleep over really. The form of our players was not up to their normal level. But I think it's a credit to Jabloteh that they were on top of their game today," W Connection's coach Stuart Charles-Fevrier said.Today from 6 pm Joe Public face Futgof at the PSA Ground.