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."