BROOKLYN, NY – Players with Caribbean connections, including Lyle Taylor, Stephen Duke-McKenna, and Kairo Mitchell, were on target for their English clubs in the league and FA Trophy matches on Saturday.
Recent Birmingham City arrival Taylor, a 31-year-old striker, who plays for Montserrat, scored the second goal just after the break as the Blues brushed aside Luton Town 3-0 in the second-tier Championship at St Andrew’s.
Dutch-born Curacao midfielder Juninho Bacuna, 24, moved from Scottish defending champions Rangers last month grabbed his first Blues goal to fire his side into a first-half lead. After Taylor’s strike, Onel Hernandez, a 29-year-old Cuban, wrapped up the points on 69 minutes.
It was Blues’ first victory in five games and their first clean sheet since November. It also completed a double by Birmingham over the Hatters this season by an aggregate score of 8-0 after winning 5-0 at Kenilworth Road in August.
Liverpool-born Duke-McKenna, a 21-year-old midfielder who plays for Guyana’s Jaguars, kept Torquay United in the hunt for a playoff spot in the fifth-tier National League as the Gulls made it back-to-back wins a 3-1 victory over bottom-placed Dover Athletic.
Duke-McKenna put the game to bed in stoppage time after making a good run and sending the past ball goalkeeper Adam Parkes.
Mitchell, a 24-year-old striker with Grenada’s Spice Boyz, bagged an 86th-minute winner as National League outfit Notts County won 2-1 at Halifax Town in the fifth round of the FA Trophy, a tournament reserved for teams in levels 5-8 of the English pyramid.
Junior Morias, a 26-year-old Jamaican, wrapped up Dagenham & Redbridge’s 2-0 win over 10-man Spennymoor Town in another Trophy game, doubling his side’s tally on 77 minutes.
Myles Hippolyte, a 27-year-old winger who was one of a handful of players the Spice Boyz tried to sign up in 2015 for World Cup qualifiers and who is also eligible to play for St Lucia, got Stockport County’s winner on 60 minutes as Stockport County defeated Cheshunt 1-0 in the Trophy.
Another player of St Lucian descent, Reeco Hackett-Fairchild, a 24-year-old right-winger, opened the floodgates after heading the hosts into a 56th-minute lead from a Marcus Harness cross as Portsmouth thrashed bottom club Doncaster Rovers 4-0 in League One.
Cameron Archer, whose mother is Jamaican, fired a late winner to give Preston North End all three points with a 1-0 win at Peterborough United that kept the hosts inside the Championship relegation zone.
Archer curled a beauty into the top corner 10 minutes from time to delight the visiting fans and manager Ryan Lowe, who said: “It was going to be a moment of brilliance from either side [which won the match]. Luckily enough, that moment of brilliance came from us.”
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