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Saturday, March 15, 2025

Calypso Stickmen touch down in Porec

by

Nigel Simon
43 days ago
20250131
T&T senior men’s indoor hockey on arrival at their hotel in Porec, Croatia on Wednesday night after almost two days of travelling ahead of the ahead of the start of the  FIH Indoor Hockey World Cup from February 3-9.

T&T senior men’s indoor hockey on arrival at their hotel in Porec, Croatia on Wednesday night after almost two days of travelling ahead of the ahead of the start of the FIH Indoor Hockey World Cup from February 3-9.

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).


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