T&T se­nior men’s in­door hock­ey ar­rived in Porec, Croa­t­ia on Wednes­day night af­ter al­most two days of trav­el­ling and had their first train­ing ses­sion yes­ter­day ahead of the start of the FIH In­door Hock­ey World Cup on Feb­ru­ary 3 and runs un­til Feb­ru­ary 9.

The team’s jour­ney to Croa­t­ia in­volved a 12-hour stopover in Bar­ba­dos, from where they jour­ney to Lon­don, then to Italy be­fore ar­riv­ing in Croa­t­ia and fol­low­ing their light ses­sion yes­ter­day, the Dar­ren Cowie-led "Ca­lyp­so Stick­men" will train to­day ahead of their warm-up against South Africa to­mor­row (Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 1,) ahead of their match­es in the Group C cam­paign.

The 17th-ranked T&T will open its cam­paign ver­sus world fourth-ranked Aus­tralia on Mon­day (Feb­ru­ary 3) ahead of their re­main­ing match­es ver­sus 14th-ranked Namib­ia on Wednes­day (Feb­ru­ary 5) and Bel­gium, ranked third in the world, on Thurs­day (Feb­ru­ary 6).

Pool A will fea­ture world top-ranked Aus­tria, No 22 Croa­t­ia, No 9 Poland and No 8 South Africa, while No 12 Ar­genti­na, No 5 Ger­many, No 2 Iran, and No 22 Malaysia are in Pool B.

At the end of the three round-robin pool match­es, the top eight ranked teams will con­test the quar­ter­fi­nals ahead of the semi­fi­nals, fi­nal, and oth­er play­off spots.

Led by head coach Raphael Govia, who will be in charge of the team for a sec­ond straight FIH In­door World Cup af­ter his de­but at the pres­ti­gious event in 2018 in Berlin, Ger­many, where T&T placed tenth, the lo­cals will be ea­ger to im­prove on their pre­vi­ous fin­ish­es.

Speak­ing from Croa­t­ia, Govia said the guys have set­tled in and had a very good first ses­sion af­ter they man­aged to get some some very im­por­tant rest af­ter 48 hours of fly­ing.

The T&T squad is a rel­a­tive­ly ex­pe­ri­enced one with Sau­di Ara­bia-based Solomon Ec­cles, goal­keep­er Ron Alexan­der and Mick­ell Pierre, all mem­bers of the two FIH In­door World Cups, first in 2007 in Vi­en­na, Aus­tria and 11 years lat­er in Ger­many.

In 2007, the T&T men's team were beat­en by Ger­many (9-2), Rus­sia (9-2), Switzer­land (6-1), Aus­tralia (5-1) and Czech Re­pub­lic (6-1) be­fore los­ing 4-2 to South Africa in their 11th to 12th po­si­tion play­off.

At their sec­ond ap­pear­ance in 2018, T&T went un­der to Czech Re­pub­lic (7-2), Poland (11-5), Aus­tralia (7-6), and Ger­many (10-2) while they picked up their first ever World Cup win 6-4 over Kaza­khstan in pool play.

How­ev­er, in the play­off for the ninth spot, T&T was edged out by Rus­sia 3-2. .

Last March in Cal­gary, Cana­da, the "Ca­lyp­so Stick­men", led by Tou­s­saint, qual­i­fied for their third FIH In­door Hock­ey World Cup de­spite a 5-2 loss to Ar­genti­na in the gold medal con­test of the five-team tour­na­ment.

T&T, the 2017 Pan Amer­i­can Cup In­door cham­pi­ons, had ear­li­er in the tour­na­ment de­feat­ed Guyana 5-3 and host Cana­da 7-3 but went un­der to the USA 4-3 and Ar­genti­na (12-2) in pool play be­fore they turned the tide on the Amer­i­cans in the semi­fi­nals, 5-4, to earn their tick­et to Croa­t­ia, with Ar­genti­na blast­ing Guyana 10-0 in the oth­er semi­fi­nal.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Hock­ey Board Willard P Har­ris speak­ing at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port pri­or to the team's de­par­ture on Tues­day morn­ing thanked the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SportTT) for sup­port­ing the na­tion­al men's hock­ey team to the 2025 FIH In­door World Cup in Croa­t­ia.

Har­ris said, "We had to work through all the re­quire­ments that are need­ed for us from the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Min­istry of Sports and we were able to get the ap­provals and the re­lease of funds to sup­port the team.|

"They al­so as­sist­ed us great­ly in hav­ing the fa­cil­i­ties at the Wood­brook Youth Fa­cil­i­ty avail­able to the na­tion­al men's team for train­ing which we were very great­ly thank­ful for."

How­ev­er, Har­ris not­ed that the team had no cor­po­rate help and it's some­thing they would love to see change go­ing for­ward.

"We didn't have any cor­po­rate as­sis­tance in get­ting the team to Croa­t­ia which is very un­for­tu­nate, but at the same time we will con­tin­ue to strive to see if we can get cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship in the fu­ture be­cause we have oth­er na­tion­al teams in­clu­sive of the Un­der-21s get­ting ready for a tour­na­ment in Bar­ba­dos, the Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Chal­lenge Cup in March."

In call­ing on cor­po­rate T&T to throw their sup­port be­hind the sport, Har­ris said, "Look­ing back hock­ey has been one of the few sports that has man­aged to have a num­ber of teams com­pete at World Cups.

"We have seen the men team qual­i­fy to three FIH In­door World Cup tour­na­ments (2007, 2018 and 2025), while the women com­pet­ed at the in­au­gur­al edi­tion in Leipzig, Ger­many in 2003 with the the men's hock­ey5s team de­but­ing last year in Oman, and the U-21 women ap­pear­ing back in Spain in 1993.

"So, we have been maybe to the most World Cups as an as­so­ci­a­tion and we have a re­al­ly good his­to­ry of rep­re­sent­ing T&T on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage, but we need that cor­po­rate sup­port," said Har­ris.

GROUPS

Pool A: No 1 Aus­tria, No 22 Croa­t­ia, No 9 Poland, No 8 South Africa

Pool B: No 12 Ar­genti­na, No 5 Ger­many, No 2 Iran, No 22 Malaysia

Pool C:No 4 Aus­tralia, No 3 Bel­gium, No 14 Namib­ia, No 17 T&T

T&T Team

Ron Alexan­der (goal­keep­er), Kar­los Stephens (goal­keep­er), Arielle Bowen, Solomon Ec­cles, Shaquille Daniel, Lyn­del By­er, Jor­dan Reynos, Jor­dan Vieira, Tarell Singh, Dar­ren Cowie (cap­tain), Mikel Pierre, Teague Mar­cano, Dy­lan Fran­cis, Nicholas Siu Butt.

Tech­ni­cal staff: Raphael Govia (coach), Akim Tou­s­saint (as­sis­tant coach), Kesh­en John­son (man­ag­er), Ak­il Howard (train­er/phys­io­ther­a­pist), Nicholas Baldeosingh (video­g­ra­ph­er).