Though he was left out of the T&T squad to face Ja­maica in two in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match­es, De­fence Force strik­er Isa­iah Lea­cock scored the lone item in steer­ing his team to their ninth vic­to­ry of the sea­son and there­by main­tained their un­beat­en record when they de­feat­ed FC Phoenix 1-0 in Tier 1 of the T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League on Sun­day (Febrau­ry 2).

Play­ing on the Ken Cooke Ground of the St James Bar­rack on Long Cir­cu­lar Road, the De­fence Force, who were mi­nus sev­en of their key play­ers to na­tion­al du­ty, left it late for a team of their stan­dards be­fore Lea­cock fired in the win­ner in the 32nd minute.

The win pushed them to 27 points, a mere eight points ahead of their clos­est chal­lenger, AC Port-of-Spain, who were held to a goal­less draw in the sec­ond game of the dou­ble­head­er Sun­day by San Juan Jabloteh. That re­sult saw the Cap­i­tal City Boyz (AC Port-of-Spain) re­place MIC Cen­tral FC Re­boot as the sec­ond-place team, while the lat­ter dropped to third, fol­low­ing their 7-5 loss to Mis­cel­la­neous Po­lice on Fri­day last at the La Hor­quet­ta Recre­ation Ground.

The San Juan men, who last week clob­bered Ea­gles FC 5-1 at the Ari­ma Velo­drome, main­tained the sixth po­si­tion on the 12-team stand­ings with 15 points, while FC Phoenix al­so stayed at ninth with sev­en points from nine match­es.

RE­SULTS

De­fence Force Elites 1 (Isa­iah Lea­cock 32nd) vs FC Phoenix 0

AC Port of Spain 0 vs San Juan Jabloteh 0

Lat­est Stand­ings

Teams P W D L F A GD Pts

1. De­fence Force FC 9 9 0 0 37 10 27 27

2. AC PoS 9 6 1 2 19 10 9 19

3. Cen­tral FC 9 6 0 3 25 16 9 18

4. Po­lice FC 9 5 1 3 31 18 13 16

5. Cale­do­nia AIA 9 5 1 3 14 18 -4 16

6. Jabloteh 9 4 3 2 22 15 7 15

7. Club San­do 9 3 3 3 17 14 3 12

8. La Hor­quet­ta Rangers 9 2 3 4 16 18 -2 9

9. 1976 FC Phoenix 9 2 1 6 11 21 -10 7

10. Point Fortin Civic 9 2 0 7 9 19 -10 6

11. Prison Ser­vice FC 9 1 3 5 10 19 -9 6

12. Ea­gles FC 9 1 0 8 8 41 -33 3