It is the ultimate showdown in local football. Two evenly-matched teams will go at each other for 90 minutes tomorrow to decide who will win the 2007 Mayor’s Cup football tournament which carries as first prize a whopping $500,000.
The venue will be the Georgetown Football Club (GFC) ground and the time 6pm for what should be an entertaining evening of football under the floodlights of GFC.
The two teams are the best that Georgetown has to offer and in Pele and Fruta Conquerors, the two teams in the final, fans will be divided as to which team will be the better team tomorrow night.
Pele, however with the President’s and Nations Cup under their belt last season, will start as firm favourites to dethrone defending champions Fruta Conquerors.
Pele are the definite form-horse even though they struggled to beat Den Amstel in their first round and needed penalty kicks to advance after the two teams had played to a goalless draw after regulation and extra time.
Since then, however, the Pele marksmen have been hitting the bull’s eye with amazing regularity.
Pele, showing little compassion for a fellow City Side, thrashed Camptown 5-0 in a quarter-final match before upping the ante against Victoria Kings of East Coast who received a 7-0 drubbing in the semi-final.
Any team which has scored 12 goals in their last two matches without conceding any is bound to feel that they have begun to gel both in offence as well as defence.
Additionally, strikers Nigel `Powers’ Codrington and Gregory `Jackie’ Chan Richardson have the additional incentive of one Jailing motorcycle which will go to the player who scores the most goals in the competition.
Codrington has so far scored five goals to Richardson’s four and underlying the fight for supremacy and the $500,000 first prize between the two teams, could be the battle between the two twin Pele strikers over who will ride off with the two-wheel ride, especially since Fruta Conquerors’ top striker Delon Williams has only two goals.
Fruta Conquerors, the defending champions, should however, not be underestimated. They are, after-all, three-time champions of the competition, winning the tournament the last time it was played in 2005.
This year Fruta Con-querors started off like a house on fire with a resounding 4-0 whipping of Uitvlugt.
They then disposed of City Side Santos 4-3 on penalty kicks in the quarter- finals after a scoreless encounter.
Then, like true champions, the Conquerors’ side put on a fiery display to roast Linden’s top team Topp XX 2-1 in the semi-finals, a performance which stunned the packed GFC crowd more so after the team was reduced to 10 men after only 37 minutes.
And while neither Conquerors’ goalkeeper Seion Bailey nor Pele’s custodian Shemroy Arthur will sleep easily tonight, the goalkeeper on the winning side will definitely sleep easier not only because of his team being $500,000 richer but because a bed donated by A. H and L Kissoon for the most outstanding goalkeeper.
Pele’s Dirk Archer and Conquerors’ Neville Stanton are also front-runners for the best defender award.
The third-place play-off between Victoria Kings and Topp XX starts at 6pm and should whet the appetite for the main course which will follow at 8pm.
