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."