Football: Division one league - Côte d’Or take pole position, La Passe and Foresters draw |25 June 2018

Côte d’Or defeated neighbours LightStars 3-2 on Praslin at Stad Amitié on Saturday to open up a three-point gap at the top of the first division league standings while on the same day on La Digue, La Passe shared the points with Foresters in a 1-1 draw.

Côte d’Or, who had thrashed Au Cap in their previous match, found the going much tougher against LightStars as they were held to a 0-0 draw at the interval.

The 2016 league champions though broke the deadlock through their deadly marksman, Malagasy Voavy Faralahibe as he netted his 15th goal of this league campaign for a 1-0 lead and soon after his strike partner and brother Kassah Voavy made it 2-0.

Renick Esther pulled a goal back for LightStars at 1-2 but Kassah bagged his second goal of the match to put his team 3-1 ahead.

LightStars scored again late in the match as Malagasy midfielder Xavier scored for a final 3-2 result though their coach Ted Esther was unhappy with the officials, especially referee Nelson Emile as he was adamant that their opponents’ third goal should not have stood due to a handball incident by the goal scorer.

“I am convinced that there was a handball before the third goal and the officials should have disallowed the goal and this is quite discouraging as we had given a good account of ourselves and the scoreline does not reflect the match where we were the better team in the first half as we had aimed to score early in our quest to win this encounter, but we must be pleased with our performance,” LightStars’ coach Esther told Sports NATION.

For his part, former LightStars coach James Barra who is now the head coach of Côte d’Or, accepted that their opponents were superior to them in the first half and he was just pleased they won a tough match.

“We knew that our opponents were going to make things difficult for us and they played well in the first half, but we came back after the break with more conviction and raised our game as it was important to win all the points to open up a three-point lead at the top of the table,” coach Barra explained to Sports NATION.

La Passe and Foresters share the spoils

La Digue side La Passe shared a 1-1 draw against Foresters on Saturday afternoon in a league encounter on La Digue at the L’Union playing field.

La Passe took the lead courtesy of their defender Gervais Saminaden against his former club for a 1-0 lead, but Foresters, who had downed St Michel in the their previous outing, equalised soon after through their Ugandan forward Tony Kizito for a 1-1 scoreline.

R. J-L