Nigel Si­mon

Akim Tou­s­saint scored two first-half goals as T&T "Ca­lyp­so Stick­men" whipped Chile 5-1 for their sec­ond straight win in Pool B play at the fourth Pan Amer­i­can Cup, Bramp­ton, Toron­to, Cana­da, yes­ter­day to seal a semi­fi­nal spot.

Af­ter a ner­vous open­ing by T&T dur­ing which goal­keep­er An­drey Rocke had to make two ear­ly saves, the Ca­lyp­so Stick­men went ahead wit a goal by Akim Tou­s­saint in the 12th minute through a penal­ty-cor­ner con­ver­sion and two min­utes lat­er, Mick­ell Pierre dou­bled the lead with a close range fin­ish.

Sev­en min­utes from the half, Tou­s­saint capped off a clev­er­ly worked penal­ty cor­ner play to put T&T 3-0 ahead.

Eleven min­utes in­to the sec­ond-half, Dwain Quan Chan ex­tend­ed T&T's lead to 4-0 and with­in a minute sub­sti­tute Wayne Leg­erton added a fifth item be­fore Jan Berczely pulled a goal back for Chile in the 59th minute. With the win which avenged a 4-0 loss to the Chileans at the FIH World League Round Two, which was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil ear­li­er this year, T&T im­proved to max­i­mum six points from two match­es, two ahead of host Cana­da, which squan­dered a 2-0 lead in a 2-2 draw with Chile on Sun­day night.

Speak­ing af­ter the match, Tou­s­saint said the team was de­light­ed with the win as they en­tered the match with a game plan and stuck to it.

To­day is a rest day in the tour­na­ment and when match­es re­sume to­mor­row, the 30th world ranked T&T with a best ever fin­ish of fourth in 2004 al­so in Cana­da, will need on­ly a draw against Cana­da to top the group and avoid Pan Am pow­er­house Ar­genti­na, in the semi­fi­nals.

A win for Cana­da will rel­e­gate T&T, 5-2 win­ners over Brazil on Sun­day, to sec­ond spot in the group. In yes­ter­day's oth­er match, USA slammed Uruguay 12-0 for its first win in Pool A play af­ter two match­es, the same as Mex­i­co while Ar­genti­na leads the group with max­i­mum six points.

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.

The win­ner of the tour­na­ment qual­i­fies for next year's Men's World Cup in The Hague, Hol­land while the top six teams qual­i­fy for the 2017 Men's Pan Amer­i­can Cup. Teams placed sev­enth and eight will play in the 2015 Men's Pan Amer­i­can Chal­lenge.

Ar­genti­na, ranked tenth in the world has al­ready qual­i­fied for the World Cup af­ter their su­perb per­for­mance at the re­cent FIH World League semi­fi­nal in Jo­hor, Malaysia, where they fin­ished sec­ond to Ger­many, but ahead of Eng­land and Ko­rea.

If, how­ev­er, they win in Bramp­ton, the run­ner-up would not ben­e­fit from an au­to­mat­ic World Cup berth.

Re­sults:

Sun­day: Pool B:

Chile 2 (Sven Richter 54th, Jose Zir­pel 56th) vs Cana­da 2 (Matthew Guest 21st, Matthew Sor­men­to 27th)

Yes­ter­day:

Pool A: USA 12 (Chris­t­ian Lin­ney 3rd, 4th, 18th, 36th, 40th, Pat Har­ris 37th, 47th, 59th, 63rd, Kevin Bar­ber 24th, 27th, Parmeet Singh 43rd) vs Uruguay 0

Pool B: T&T 5 (Akim Tou­s­saint 12th, 28th, Mick­ell Pierre 14th, Dwain Quan Chan 46th, Wayne Leg­erton 47th) vs Chile 1 (Jan Berczely 59th).

To­mor­row's match­es: Pool A: Mex­i­co vs USA, 11 am; Ar­genti­na vs Uruguay, 5 pm

Pool B: Brazil vs Chile, 9 am; Cana­da vs T&T, 7 pm