Guyana’s Golden Jaguars advanced to the next round of the Digicel Caribbean Championships, following a 1-1 draw with Suriname in their crucial group `B’ match at the Guyana National Stadium, Providence last night in front of a fair amount of home support.
The Golden Jaguars had gone down to Suriname 1-2 when the two teams last met at the same venue six weeks ago in the return fixture of the 2010 World Cup qualifiers.
The draw meant that they topped Group B of the tournament on a better goal average than Suriname and will journey to Trinidad and Tobago for the next round of matches.
Suriname were the first to put their name in the scorers column when Vangellino Sastronedjo sent a powerful free kick from just outside Guyana’s 18 yard box around the wall to beat a diving Richard Reynolds in the 22nd minute.
Suriname was to enjoy the comfortable one goal cushion up until the first minute of injury time after 90 minutes of exciting football.
From a goal mouth scrimmage, Dwight Peters, who repeatedly fed forwards Nigel ‘Powers’ Codrington and Collie ‘Hitman ‘ Hercules all to no avail, found the back of the net from a Walter ‘Boyd’ Moore corner kick with Suriname’s custodian Ronny Aloema out of position.
Earlier, Guyana, who controlled the run of play for the first 20 minutes of the first half, found it difficult to place the ball into the net as Suriname’s defence, led by captain Marlon Felter, with support from Derrick Garden, Rinaldo Lipson and Lorenzo Wiebers, were equal to the task.
Hercules had the opportunity of putting Guyana first on the scorer’s table after he made his way into the box following a pass from Moore but his shot went wide.
Suriname rebounded to win a free kick two minutes later at the top of Guyana’s box but the ensuing shot from Sastronedjo was blocked by the wall and the rebound taken by Germaine Vandijck was off target.
It was evident at this stage that the steam was leaving the Jaguars as their opponents were beginning to come into their own as they controlled the run of play.
Sastronedjo, Clifton Sanduvliet and Wensley Christophe, were all thorns in the flesh of the Guyanese defence forcing Charles ’Lily’ Pollard, Howard Lowe, Kester Jacobs and Carey Harris to prevent goal scoring opportunities.
But their efforts all went in vain following an infringement committed on Gary Sordjo who was an early substitution for Suriname following a hamstring injury to Garden in the ninth minute.
The resulting free kick, taken by Sastronedjo, was converted to send Suriname into the lead.
After the match, both Pollard and Hercules confirmed the earlier reports that it was their last game for Guyana on home soil, even as the Golden Jaguars move on to the next round of matches which will be played in Trinidad and Tobago sometime in September.
