Police

Sergeant Richard Hood ran the Police FC dugout until 2024, when a falling-out with the leadership of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service ended his time in the job. It is a fair illustration of what sets this club apart: the players and coaches are serving officers first and footballers second, and a posting or a dispute with a superior can end a spell in the team as quickly as results do.

The side was formed in 1975 to give police officers somewhere to play, based then and now in Saint James, on the edge of Port of Spain. Its own ground, the Police Barracks Ground, has largely given way in the current Premier Football League to the bigger Hasely Crawford Stadium in the capital and the Mannie Ramjohn Stadium in Marabella, where home matches have been played instead. The home kit is navy blue, the away kit white.

Police have won the national league three times and the FA Trophy three times, the first of those cups arriving in the year the club was founded. The one occasion that stands apart came in 1991, when Police reached the final of the CONCACAF Champions Cup and lost to Mexico's Puebla 4-2 on aggregate, a stage few Caribbean clubs have reached before or since.

Staying in the professional game it helped set up as a founding member in 1999 has not always been straightforward: financial trouble forced Police out of the league for the 2009 season, with Ma Pau taking their place, before they returned within the year. Their sharpest fixture is against Defence Force, the army's club, a meeting between two sides drawn from barracks life that Trinidad and Tobago still calls the servicemen's derby. Mekeil Williams, capped 32 times for Trinidad and Tobago, came up through Police before moves to Poland, Denmark and Major League Soccer.

Police head into the current TT Premier Football League campaign judged, as ever, first against Defence Force and only then against the rest of the table.