JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, March 15, 2025

Govia calls for more support for hockey

by

Nigel Simon
33 days ago
20250210
Raphael Govia

Raphael Govia

Raphael Govia, T&T men's in­door hock­ey coach, is call­ing for more to be done for the sport lo­cal­ly if they are to make an im­pact on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage.

Govia was speak­ing af­ter his team's 12th place fin­ish to end the FIH In­door Hock­ey World Cup at the Pla­va Re­sort Sports Cen­tre in Porec, Croa­t­ia, on Sun­day fol­low­ing a 6-4 loss to Malaysia in the 11th to 12th play­off.

Speak­ing af­ter his team's de­feat, a frus­trat­ed Govia who was al­so coach of the men's team at the 2018 In­door World Cup in Berlin, Ger­many where they fin­ished tenth of the 12 teams, ad­mit­ted his team nev­er came to terms with the speed of the op­pos­ing teams through­out the tour­na­ment.

In their Group C round-robin match­es, T&T was beat­en 7-2 by both Aus­tralia and Bel­gium, ranked fourth and third in the world re­spec­tive­ly and 6-3 by 14th-ranked Namib­ia be­fore los­ing 12-3 to host and 22nd ranked Croa­t­ia in their ninth to 12th semi­fi­nal play.

Re­flect­ing on the tour­na­ment, Govia said, "This is a World Cup, and we know we were off the pace a bit from the on­set of this cam­paign.

"To­day (yes­ter­day), we paid the price for the mis­takes that we made and of course, we con­tin­ued to have the prob­lems of con­vert­ing our chances, so that al­ways kept us in quick­sand.

"Again to­day (yes­ter­day), when we rest­ed play­ers we got goals against us in that pe­ri­od of time and those things are out of our con­trol as key play­ers have to rest be­cause of the pace of the game and quick ball move­ment of these teams.

"At the end of the day, we have three to four years again to pre­pare for an­oth­er In­door World Cup and all things con­sid­ered as I kept say­ing be­fore lim­it­ed hock­ey in T&T and lim­it­ed in­door prepa­ra­tions and lim­it­ed in­door tour­na­ments is a hin­drance to us.

"Some of our play­ers had to go to a tour­na­ment in Guyana to play as while in the Ven­tures In­door Tour­na­ment at the start of the year, most of the play­ers could not par­tic­i­pate so as not to risk in­jury com­ing in­to this tour­na­ment.

"So these are the prob­lems we con­tin­ue to have in T&T where coach­es get ex­cus­es from up front be­cause they are put in a po­si­tion where they have an out.

"I have been talk­ing about this for a lit­tle bit now and I don't like it be­cause I be­lieve if we send a na­tion­al team to rep­re­sent T&T they should get as much prepa­ra­tion as pos­si­ble giv­en to them to get re­sults in any tour­na­ment that they par­take in.

"How­ev­er, we con­tin­ue to just send teams out and it seems that we are con­tent­ed with that but that is not how it should work.

"To me, you want your ath­letes to per­form at the best and if you as­sess the sit­u­a­tion we weren't giv­en the best op­por­tu­ni­ties to per­form at this World Cup, by just send­ing us from T&T straight to Croa­t­ia with­out any in­ter­na­tion­al prepa­ra­tion.

"We went to Bar­ba­dos and spent 10 hours ba­si­cal­ly look­ing af­ter our­selves when we got there un­til the next flight was a to­tal mess and peo­ple have to be held ac­count­able in the same way we want to hold oth­er per­sons in of­fices ac­count­able as every­thing in the coun­try is about ac­count­abil­i­ty now, and we now need to trans­fer that in­to sport for our ath­letes to get the best chance to per­form at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el and we need to take sport se­ri­ous­ly."

With re­spect to the state of the game lo­cal­ly, Govia, in high­light­ing the im­pact of for­mer T&T in­ter­na­tion­al Kwand­wane Browne said, "We are still bank­ing of the old days of for­mer play­er Kwand­wane Browne, now part of the Eng­land coach­ing staff, pulling our play­ers to Eng­land which we ben­e­fit­ed from in the past.

"I can't count the num­ber of play­ers he took out of T&T and helped de­vel­op in an era where T&T hock­ey was suc­cess­ful at both in­door and out­door, and right now we have about five play­ers on the lat­ter part of their ca­reers from that era.

"But, if we don't con­tin­ue to get play­ers out on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage, then in three to four years when we com­pete at the next Pan Amer­i­can qual­i­fiers we are go­ing to be in some se­ri­ous prob­lems, es­pe­cial­ly if we don't get hock­ey in T&T back up and run­ning again."

He stat­ed, "This is not me spilling my guts or try­ing to say that hock­ey is the bas­tard sport of T&T, but at the end of the day I be­lieve these are some of the things that needs to be cor­rect that will help.

"We have some Un­der-21s com­ing up and they have a tour­na­ment in Bar­ba­dos next month and that's the fu­ture of our hock­ey, and in or­der for our hock­ey to im­prove it starts with the next cy­cle with these group of U-21 play­ers. Be­cause a lot of the teams here in Croa­t­ia like Ger­many and Aus­tria and you check the com­po­si­tion of their teams, they have at least three to four U-17 play­ers in their teams.

"They play hock­ey at a high­er lev­el in the Bun­desli­ga in Ger­many as do a lot of the play­ers at this World Cup, and I will say again we need to get things right with our sport."

With com­pe­ti­tion for qual­i­fi­ca­tion ex­pect­ed to be a keen con­test Govia warned, "In the next cy­cle of the Pan Amer­i­can qual­i­fiers we have to bat­tle again with the likes of Ar­genti­na, USA and Cana­da and we are not cer­tain if we will be all play­ing for one spot or two as we are not sure what the fed­er­a­tion will de­cide ahead of the qual­i­fiers."


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored