St David’s Warriors 3 Devonshire Colts 1

James Pace scored a brace as St David’s Warriors were crowned First Division Shield champions with victory over ten-man Devonshire Colts at Wellington Oval yesterday.

Pace was on target in each half, with a further goal coming from Christen Lugo. Colts, who had Keino Burch sent off by referee Wendy Woodley for a contentious second bookable offence, grabbed a consolation through a Chermal Henry penalty.

Aaron Lugo, the Warriors coach was pleased with the win, which came 16 years after he and captain D’mitri Butterfield secured the same silverware, when the former was still a player.

“I would say it went the way we expected,’’ Lugo said. “We knew Devonshire Colts were going to come at us, they’re a talented team but we had some tactics that we wanted to use against them, and it worked exactly the way we wanted it.

“This is a smash and grab, we were not here to try look pretty, play any sort of possession for this game.

“We knew that Devonshire Colts were going to be gunning for us, so we did what we had to do to get the victory.

Butterfield spoke of how they had an idea of what had to be done to secure the win.

“We had a game plan that we implemented, we executed it to perfection,’’ Butterfield said. “We knew we had the team to win as long as we showed up. We won it 16 years ago, we played together, now coach and captain, it was nice to win it again.”

Colts coach Ray Jones was in disagreement with Woodley’s decision to send off Burch.

“I'm trying to stay away from the officials, but all I'm going to do is send the tape to the referees chairman like I always do,’’ Jones said.

“I guess all she’s going to do is apologise when she sees that there was contact. She’s saying he dove, the guy pulled out but he still made contact.

“That red card galvanised St David’s, at that time we were coming at them. We had them pinned for quite a bit, but going down to ten men it set us back a bit and gave them the energy to push on and right after that, they got the third goal.”

Pace opened the scoring in the 20th minute with a header from a Lugo free kick. Two minutes later, Keishen Bean could have extended the lead, but could not keep his header on target.

Colts were awarded a penalty in the 25th minute when Henry was impeded by Jahnico Wales. The Colts captain took the responsibility, and while St David’s goalkeeper Chazz Knights got his hands onto the ball, it was not enough to prevent from going in.

Straight from the restart, the Warriors restored their lead, Lugo rounding goalkeeper Gregory Rose to score.

Burch, already booked for his involvement in an unnecessary scuffle in the 38th minute, was shown a second yellow card in the 60th minute. Woodley deemed that the Colts forward was guilty of simulation when he went down in the box under challenge.

With the man advantage, Pace assured the Warriors of the win with his second of the game in the 65th minute, lobbing over an advancing Rose.

SCORERS

St David’s Warriors: Pace 20, 66, Lugo 26,

Devonshire Colts: Henry 25 pen

TEAMS

St David’s Warriors (4-4-2): C Knights 7 – V Brown 6, D Butterfield 7, A Paynter 6 (sub: O Jones 57 mins 5), J Wales 6 (sub: J Jervis 50 mins 5) – M Moreno 6, M Proctor 6 (D Minors 83 mins), C Richardson, C Lugo 7 – J Pace 8 (sub: C King 83 mins), K Bean 6 (sub: O Minors 83). Substitutes not used: N Russell, T McCallan, A Paynter. Booked: Moreno, Brown.

Devonshire Colts (4-3-3): G Rose 5 – D Davis 6, A Van Duyne 5 (sub: S Tatem 74 mins), J Dublin 5, R Jones 5 – J Burgess 5, D Ball 6, R Smith-Jones 6 – K Burch 5, S Blair 5, S Paynter 4 (sub: A Smith 67 5), C Henry 7. Substitutes not used: T Burgess, I Greaves, A Hart, I Naylor, J Saunders, A Smith, A Wolf. Booked: Blair-Paynter, Burch, Smith-Jones. Sent off: Burch.

Referee: W Woodley.