Gibbes leads T&T U-14s to CFU semis

Jahmiah Gibbes of the Ball Blasters scored a pair of first-half goals to lead T&T Under-14 footballers to a 5-0 blanking of St Kitts and Nevis for a second win in as many matches in Tier I Group A of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) Under-14 Boys Challenge Series at the Dwight Yorke Stadium in Bacolet, Tobago, on Sunday night.

Winners over Aruba 3-1 on Saturday in their tournament opener, the Densill Theobald-coached T&T secured a semifinal spot with the win ahead of their pool decider with Jamaica last night at the same venue.

On Sunday, T&T went ahead in the 19th minute through Gibbes, and four minutes later, he made it 2-0 by converting a penalty, which his team took into the interval.

St Kitts & Nevis, beaten 2-0 by Jamaica in Saturday’s Group A curtain-raiser, had a chance to cut T&T’s lead in half in the 44th minute from the penalty spot after defender Essien Thomas bundled over Adondre Eddy in the 18-yard box.

However, Lajewan Jeffers then wasted the chance when he skied his effort from 12 yards high over the bar to let T&T off the hook.

Five minutes later, St Kitts/Nevis was made to pay for their wasted chance when City FC’s Regan Rowe right-footed attempt from an acute angle slipped under goalkeeper Brian Collins on his near post to push T&T’s advantage to 3-0 and within sight of victory.

With ten minutes left in the 70-minute contest, midfielder Aaden Jones of Creek FC added a fourth item for T&T before live-wire Jaedan Anthony, also of Ball Blasters, capped off the win for T&T with his first of the afternoon.

In the first match at Bacolet on Sunday, Kelvin Brown netted a first-half beaver trick inside the first 12 minutes to fire Jamaica to a 6-0 thrashing of Aruba, setting up a group decider with host T&T with both teams already assured of spots in Friday’s semifinals.

For the young ‘Reggae Boyz’ lanky striker, Brown got his goals as early as the first, second, ninth, and 12th minutes, while Kyle Hussey and Tevin Savage added second-half items in the 37th and 43rd minutes, respectively, to sit atop the four-team pool ahead of T&T on goal difference.

In Group B of Tier I, Puerto Rico and French Guiana battled to a 1-1 draw to enter yesterday’s final round of matches level on four points at the top of the table, while Curacao is third with three points.

This was after French Guiana got a strike from Guezo Atoukou in the second minute of stoppage time to cancel out Fabian Sall’s 41st-minute opener for Puerto Rico in a clash that saw both teams finish the match with ten players following a red card each.

And in the first match in Group B, Curacao blanked St. Martin 2-0, with Juan Molina Robles (12th) and Sem Ruiz Rincon (41st) the scorers.

At the end of the Tier I group series, the top two teams will qualify for the semifinals to be played on Friday, August 23 at Bacolet, with the final scheduled for Sunday.

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