Nigel Si­mon

With on­ly two days left be­fore they are due to flick off their cam­paign at the fourth Pan Amer­i­can Cup to be held in Bramp­ton, Toron­to, Cana­da, this coun­try's se­nior men's hock­ey team was still with­out visas, con­firmed tick­ets and ac­com­mo­da­tion for their stay in North Amer­i­ca.

Yes­ter­day, the 18-man play­ing squad skip­pered by Dar­ren Cowie and the coach­ing staff head­ed by for­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er Glen "Fi­do" Fran­cis was ex­pect­ed to de­part for Cana­da. How­ev­er, when con­tact­ed of­fi­cials at the T&T Hock­ey Board con­firmed the team was still strand­ed in T&T.

Pressed fur­ther, the of­fi­cial said de­spite nu­mer­ous ap­peals to cor­po­rate T&T, the T&THB had been un­able to se­cure the req­ui­site fund­ing to fa­cil­i­tate the team's par­tic­i­pa­tion in the up­com­ing Pan Amer­i­can Cup, which served as a qual­i­fi­er to next year's World Cup in The Hague, Nether­lands.

Dis­cus­sions are still be­ing held re­gard­ing sup­port for the un­der­tak­ing giv­en the penal­ties and set­backs the team may face if they fail to ap­pear at the tour­na­ment. How­ev­er, up to yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the man­age­r­i­al staff had yet to se­cure the visas and tick­ets for the play­ers and five-mem­ber tech­ni­cal staff.

Ac­cord­ing to the lo­cal hock­ey board of­fi­cial, T&T's fail­ure to ap­pear at the tour­na­ment will sti­fle the de­vel­op­ment of the team, and by ex­ten­sion hock­ey in the coun­try, back a few years as a dip in the team's rank­ing at this stage would put the team out of con­tention for a spot in the Com­mon­wealth Games to be held in Glas­gow, Scot­land next year.

T&T is present­ly ranked 30th in the world and fail­ure to ap­pear at this tour­na­ment will al­so ex­clude the team from au­to­mat­ic par­tic­i­pa­tion at the 2017 Pan Amer­i­can Cup as on­ly teams that fin­ish among the first six in this year's tour­na­ment qual­i­fy au­to­mat­i­cal­ly for the next edi­tion of the tour­na­ment.

To qual­i­fy for the 2017 Pan Amer­i­can Cup T&T would have to first par­tic­i­pate in the 2015 Pan Amer­i­can Chal­lenge to earn a place and fail­ure to ap­pear al­so has po­ten­tial to af­fect the na­tion­al women's team who is des­tined for Ar­genti­na in Sep­tem­ber for the women's ver­sion of this tour­na­ment.

Should the team get to Cana­da, it will open its cam­paign in Pool B ver­sus Chile on Sat­ur­day from 3 pm fol­lowed by Brazil on Sun­day, then play Cana­da on Tues­day to end round-robin pool play.

Re­gion­al pow­er­house Ar­genti­na, Mex­i­co, USA and Uruguay are in Pool A.

At the end of the pool round-robin se­ries, the top two teams will ad­vance to the cross-over semi­fi­nals while third and fourth go to semi­fi­nals for fifth to eighth spot ahead of the fi­nal play­offs for bronze and gold.