Half Moon lift Hotel crown after shootout
ROSE HALL, St James — Half Moon Club survived a nerve-wracking penalty shootout to beat Grand Palladium Resort 1-0 in sudden death penalties in Friday’s final of the Ventura Elegant Corridor Inter-Hotel football competition at the Half Moon field.
The teams had played out a 0-0 full and extra-time score then were tied 2-2 after the first five penalties, forcing ‘sudden-death’ in which opposing goalkeepers took aim at each other.
Half Moon’s Tristan Bernard first scored his spot kick, then saw Grand Palladium’s Marvin Lawrence hit the crossbar with his shot.
Grand Palladium finished the game with 10 men after Orane Warren was set off by referee Orville Sandcroft after being shown a second yellow card in the game.
Caribbean Gardens, who were beaten 5-0 by Half Moon in the semi-finals, took third place over Iberostar in the consolation play-offs on Thursday.
It was the second staging of the competition which replaced the long running Hotels Sports Association’s competition.
In the final, both teams created few chances throughout the game, but Half Moon with a handful of players from various Western Confederation Super League clubs had two good chances in the second half.
On two occasions when Lawrence was beaten while off his line, timely intervention by Tristan Cunningham and Fabian Ortiz saw the defenders clearing the ball off the line.
Grand Palladium’s goalkeeper Lawrence did his best to keep his team in the penalty shootout with three saves, but with the title on the line, after extolling his teammates to start celebrating, central defender Cunningham saw his show saved by Bernard, his second of the shoot-out after another had come back off the wood work.
Arval Campbell and Jeremy Bucknor had earlier scored for Half Moon, while former Reno striker Martin Williams and Danion Williams had scored for Grand Palladium.