Football finals tonight
Who will emerge as National Club champion in St. Vincent and the Grenadines?
The answer to this will be known tonight at the Victoria Park.
NEMWIL Hope International and Universal Mufflers Frenches/Samba F.C. will battle for the 2004 Guinness National Club Championship.{{more}}
Twenty-eight clubs divided into two groups started the trek to the final last February, but only these two have endured.
Hope has found the route treacherous, winning the quarterfinal and the semifinal by a one nil margin, eking out triumphs over Greggs Fair Traders and Rose Place respectively.
Its rival, Samba, has been more clinical. En route to the finals Samba beat Prospect 3 – 1, and had a 2 – 0 win at the expense of Inter-Secondary Schools in the semifinals.
Hope has gone empty- handed over the past months, after it was dethroned as champion of the Premier Division of the Sion Hill League and was debarred from continuing in the Kingstown Soccer League. Hope has a score to settle as Samba whipped them last year in the Sion Hill League.
Samba will try to capture its third title in five months. Last December it won the League and Knockout versions of the Arnos Vale Football League.
In tonightâs final, Hope will be without two of its key players due to injury, and another two – Marlon James and Randy Pierre – are in Malaysia on football duties.
Defender Aquasi Audain suffered a fractured right hand while midfielder Vincent John is recuperating from a broken cheekbone sustained earlier in the competition.
Dubbed âthe night of finalsâ, tonightâs action will also see the finals of the Underâ20 League Competition as well as that of the Masters League.
South Leeward and Layou will battle in the Under-20, while African Tref and Rose Place will play each other in the Masters. These will precede the Hope versus Samba encounter.
The presentation ceremony will follow. But whilst the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Football Federation will complete two of its competitions, presentations, etc., it still has to handle the Guinness Inter-League that ended November 2002.
The Masters Tourna-ment is a product of the SVG Masters Club. That body was responsible for the organization of the National Club Championship as well as the Under-20 League.