Police kick-off with three points

All three goals came in the first half, but Club San­do which played with more pur­pose in the sec­ond half got an own-goal from Tia Hen­ry and the vet­er­an T&T stand­out Ah­keela Mol­lon fur­ther re­duced the deficit. How­ev­er, with 28 min­utes to play the south­ern­ers could not muster an­oth­er item to even seek a share of the points, whik­le their de­fence con­tained every at­tack Po­lice threw at them in the sec­ond stan­za.

How­ev­er, be­fore the on-field ac­tion Su­san Joseph-War­rick, the new­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent of the or­gan­i­sa­tion ad­dressed the gath­er­ing with com­prised 12 teams in the Pre­mier­ship and First Di­vi­sion - Po­lice FC, Club San­do, QPCC, St Au­gus­tine FC and St Au­gus­tine Ju­niors, Trinci­ty Na­tion­als, De­fence Force, Malvern, Cen­tral Women, UTT, To­ba­go Chi­cas and Jew­els FC.

She said, "I want to wel­come every­one to the open­ing of the 2019 Women’s Foot­ball Sea­son. We ex­pect that it will be a com­pet­i­tive one and will go a long way in help­ing to pre­pare our lo­cal play­ers for the next lev­el of foot­ball. As you all no doubt know, it is im­por­tant that girls are giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play sports at a com­pet­i­tive lev­el and it is our goal to in­crease the avail­able op­por­tu­ni­ties for them to do so. This com­pe­ti­tion is where our na­tion­al play­ers come from, ex­cept for those who re­side abroad, so we must re­main com­mit­ted to its’ growth."

Joseph-War­rick con­tin­ued, "We want to en­sure you that the women’s league is on­ly one event among many that we have planned. TTWOLF, as many are un­for­tu­nate­ly un­aware, is re­spon­si­ble for the de­vel­op­ment of women’s foot­ball in T&T, not just the run­ning of a league. We can­not fund na­tion­al teams, at least not at present, but we can en­sure that the play­ers mak­ing those are bet­ter equipped to suc­ceed, or at least able to make the tran­si­tion eas­i­er. To this end, it is our goal to host more com­pet­i­tive events, fun events to at­tract more women and girls to the sport, com­mu­ni­ty out­reach ini­tia­tives to build our fan­base and off-field ac­tiv­i­ties to help with the holis­tic de­vel­op­ment of our ladies.

TTWOLF needs the sup­port of all stake­hold­ers. We urge cor­po­rate T&T to get on board, the gov­ern­ment to sup­port, The TTFA to bridge the gaps in na­tion­al team de­vel­op­ment, fans to come out and play­ers to play to the best of their abil­i­ty, with the high­est de­gree of sports­man­ship. We al­so want to re­mind play­ers that while seek­ing the pub­lic and cor­po­rate Trin­ba­go’s sup­port, it is al­so im­por­tant to sup­port your own first. As we open this com­pe­ti­tion to­day, the FI­FA Women’s World Cup is tak­ing place, and we lament the fact that our girls are not in France. That while we are hap­py for Ja­maica, we feel that it should have been us, giv­en how close we have come on many oc­ca­sions."

RE­SULTS

St. Au­gus­tine 2 (Aaliyah Prince 35', Chris­sy Mitchell 84') vs QPCC 2 (Stephanie Woo Ling 4', Jes­si­ca Har­ra­gin 42')

Po­lice FC 3 (Sha­keema Fores­tine 10', Anique Walk­er 14', Sha­keema Fores­tine 35' vs Club San­do 2 (Tia Hen­ry (OG) 63', Ah­keela Mol­lon (p) 72')