Nigel Si­mon

Nigel Si­mon

T&T will be with­out the tal­ent­ed Dar­ren Cowie and five oth­er reg­u­lars for the FIH World Hock­ey League Round Two qual­i­fiers set for Chu­la Vista, San Diego, Cal­i­for­nia, USA, from Feb­ru­ary 28 to March 8.

This af­ter Cowie, who led the team as cap­tain to the Round One win in Ja­maica last Sep­tem­ber and a sil­ver medal at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games in No­vem­ber, was forced to with­draw from the team due to work com­mit­ments.

In ad­di­tion to Cowie, oth­er mem­bers of the team who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the first-round se­ries and the CAC Games in Mex­i­co are al­so forced to pull out of the event. They in­clude Aidan De Gannes, Christo­pher Sci­pio and Ish­mael Camp­bell through work com­mit­ments, while Kiel Mur­ray and Ste­fan Mout­tet are in­jured.

How­ev­er, mak­ing a re­turn to the team are Eng­land-based Kwand­wane Browne, Dil­let Gilkes and Dwain Quan Chan, all of whom will be mak­ing their first tour to­geth­er in over a year, while young­sters Joshua Olton, Kelon Sker­ritt and Teague Mar­cano have all been draft­ed in­to the train­ing squad.

Fran­cis al­so wel­comed the in­tro­duc­tion of the new faces in the train­ing squad, say­ing, "The team is in tran­si­tion at the mo­ment as over the next cou­ple of years, play­ers like Browne and Gilkes and a few oth­ers will not be around, and it is hoped that these young­sters gain enough ex­pe­ri­ence now to pick up where they leave.

"We have a lot of youth in the set-up now with the Em­manuel broth­ers, Kristin and Kwasi, Mar­cano boys, Tariq and Teague as well as Lyn­dell By­er, Joshua Olton and Kelon Sker­ritt, and they are all the fu­ture of T&T hock­ey.

In Cal­i­for­nia, T&T will com­pete in one group with USA, Rus­sia and Cana­da while Aus­tria, Chile, Ire­land and Italy are in the oth­er round-robin group at the end of which the team will meet in cross-over quar­ter­fi­nal match­es fol­lowed by semi­fi­nals, third placed and fi­nal match­es.

And look­ing ahead to the tour­na­ment, coach Glen "Fi­do" Fran­cis," who re­turns to lead the team af­ter in­ter­im coach Raphael Govia coached the team through the round one se­ries in Ja­maica last year, said the group draw for the lo­cal squad is a tough one, but al­so presents a good chance to prove it­self wor­thy of be­ing in­volve.

"We will be the low­est-ranked team in the tour­na­ment and based on the new for­mat we are al­ready as­sured of a quar­ter­fi­nal spot as on­ly eight teams are in­volved.

"How­ev­er, we want to get past that hur­dle and reach the semi­fi­nals for the least.

"The cur­rent crop of play­ers are a very good mix of youth and ex­pe­ri­ence, but we still have lots of work to do as a team and for that we will need to the sup­port of the pow­ers that be fi­nan­cial­ly," he said.

A for­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er Fran­cis al­so wel­comed the re­turn of Browne, who he says will bring a lot to the team.

Fol­low­ing the World League round-two se­ries, the na­tion­al men's team is card­ed to head to the Pan Am Games in Toron­to, Cana­da, from Ju­ly 10-26.

Men's train­ing squad

Ron Alexan­der, Kwand­wane Browne, Co­gie But­ler, Lyn­dell By­er, Shaquille Daniel, Solomon Ec­cles, Kwasi Em­manuel, Kris­ten Em­manuel, Dil­let Gilkes, Nicholas Grant, Do­minic Jaikarans­ingh, Mar­cus James, Shane Leg­erton, Ter­rence Bap­tiste, Justin Pas­cal, Tariq Mar­cano, Che Mod­este, Michael O'Con­nor, Al­lan Hen­der­son, Mick­ell Pierre, Dwain Quan Chan, Jor­dan Reynos, An­drey Rocke, Kar­los Stephen, Akim Tou­s­saint, Jor­dan Vieira, Danil Tran­coso, Do­minic Young, Teague Mar­cano, Kelon Sker­ritt, Joshua Olton.?