By Treiston Joseph
After two one-sided semi-finals on Thursday evening, the final two teams remain in the Xtreme Clean and Maintenance ‘Gold Rush’ Futsal tournament at the National Gymnasium. Tucville and Sparta Boss will meet for the second time in the tournament; this time with all the marbles on the line after both won their respective semi-final.
Tucville was a scoring machine on Thursday evening and despite some complacency towards the end of the match, walked away with a 6-4 win against Sophia who were outmatched and outclassed.
The pace of Tucville was on another level and within the blink of an eye they were up 3-1 in the first seven minutes of the match. By the half the score read 4-1 with Jermaine Junior scoring a hat-trick in the first half with goals in the fourth, seventh and 14th minutes, while Dennis Edwards had a goal in the fifth minute.
Edwards returned in the second half to score two more goals in the 30th and 34th minutes for a hat-trick. Apart from Omallo Williams’ goal in the sixth minute for Sophia their final three goals came in the final eight minutes of the match after Tucville went into rest mode.
Delon Williams, the captain of Tucville spoke to the media after the win. “It was a little close at the end there, but we got to do better than that, we allowed too many goals at the end and we can’t afford that in the final, but its back to the drawing board and prepare for the final.”
Williams also highlighted what caused the complacency at the end, while noting what needs to be done to win the final.
“I guess our physical (fitness) played a role tonight, but we will work on that with the time we have, but we are definitely going to come out and play hard regardless of who we face, we have to play this game like it’s our first and give everything we have to win because we expect a tough battle,” Williams mentioned.
Meanwhile, Sparta Boss steamrolled their way to the final with 5-1 win against Albouystown, who failed to show any grit in the match.
It was Sparta Boss’s best scoring display of the tournament and as is usually the case an early goal this time by Eusi Phillips in the second minute opened the floodgates, and well into the second half Sparta Boss had a comfortable 4-nil cushion with Eusi Phillips (2nd), Solomon Austin (7th), Gregory Richardson (23rd) and Devon Millington (25th) scoring goals.
Lennox Cort scored a very tame consolation goal in the 28th minute, while Dennis Edwards put the final nail in the coffin in the 29th minute.
Sparta and Tucville will now face off in the final on Saturday (June 17). Tucville won the earlier encounter in the tournament by a 4-2 margin.
However, with 2.5 ounces of gold up for grabs it is definitely do or die for both sides when action kicks off from 21:00h.
