T&T se­nior men’s in­door hock­ey team got off to a slow start and paid the price as Aus­tralia ran out com­fort­able 7-2 win­ners in their Group B open­er at the FIH In­door Hock­ey World Cup at the Pla­va Re­sort Sports Cen­tre in Porec, Croa­t­ia, Mon­day (Feb­ru­ary 3).

Go­ing in­to the match with­out first-choice goal­keep­er Ron Alexan­der, who was vot­ed as the “Most Valu­able Play­er’ at the Pan Amer­i­can In­door Cup in Cana­da last March due to a right an­kle in­jury, T&T was up against it from very ear­ly with the quick-pass­ing Aussies tak­ing a 1-0 lead in the third minute through Thomas Miot­to be­fore he added an­oth­er in the fourth minute while James Knee fired in the third item in the ninth minute as they threat­ened to put the match to bed be­fore the half­time whis­tle.

In the sec­ond quar­ter, Aus­tralia again got out of the blocks quick­ly and ex­tend­ed their lead to 4-0 when Ben Staines got his name on the score­sheet in­side the first minute of the restart, af­ter which a more set­tled Dar­ren Cowie-led ‘Ca­lyp­so Stick­men’ put up a much bet­ter dis­play and cre­at­ed a few chances of their own through Mick­ell Pierre, Jor­dan Vieira, and Eng­land-based Teague Mar­cano, but some­how they failed to get on the score­board as T&T trailed 4-1 at the half­time in­ter­val.

Mar­cano fi­nal­ly got T&T on the board when he fired past Ben­jamin Ren­nie on his near post to the de­light of his team­mates in the 23rd minute, but his goal on­ly seemed to spark the Ocea­nia cham­pi­ons back in­to life with Aiden Doo­ley scor­ing a quick-fire hat trick in the 24th, 25th, and 26th min­utes aid­ed by some slop­py de­fence work and goal­keep­ing from T&T’s Kar­los Stephens to push the score to 7-1 be­fore Shaquille Daniel added a late sec­ond item for T&T.

Com­ment­ing on the re­sult, T&T coach Raphael Govia said the fi­nal score didn’t re­flect how T&T played.

He added, “If any­one watched the game, we all looked off the pace, but this was be­cause of the su­pe­ri­or ball move­ment by the team that we were fac­ing.

‘Aus­tralia moved the ball very quick­ly, but we still cre­at­ed a lot of chances and man­aged to win five short cor­ners to their one, but we were un­able to cap­i­talise on them.”

“We al­so had alot of shots on tar­get, but at the same time we al­so had a lot of shots off tar­get while their keep­ers made some good saves, but not to my lik­ing be­cause our fin­ish­ing on the day should have been a lot bet­ter, and that’s some­thing we need to work on go­ing for­ward for the rest of the tour­na­ment.”

Look­ing ahead, Govia not­ed that no more train­ing ses­sions are ac­tu­al­ly card­ed due to the tight na­ture of the tour­na­ment fix­tures, and his team will need to be much bet­ter when they come up against Namib­ia on Wednes­day from 4.30 am (TT time).

“We are go­ing to do our best to make sure that our hock­ey fra­ter­ni­ty stays in­ter­est­ed in the team at this tour­na­ment by go­ing for a pos­i­tive re­sult.”

He added, “It must be not­ed that every game we are play­ing catch-up here in Croa­t­ia, as even the court is five yards wider and longer ei­ther way in com­par­i­son to what we have been prepar­ing on at the Wood­brook Youth Fa­cil­i­ty.”

Asked for an in­jury up­date on goal­keep­er Alexan­der and Mar­cano, who was struck on the nose in the late stages of the clash with the world fourth-ranked Aussies.

Govia said, Alexan­ders’ in­jury at this time looks op­ti­mistic for his re­cov­ery nonethe­less, and we are hop­ing he will be ready by Wednes­day for our next match against 17th-ranked Namib­ia; if not, Stephens will con­tin­ue in goal.”

With re­gards to Mar­cano, the T&T coach said, “Teague (Mar­cano) got a cut on his nose from a tack­le, and it was not bad enough for him to re­quire stitch­es, which we are thank­ful for, and he will be fine and ready for our next match on Wednes­day.”

The T&T team is mak­ing its third In­door World Cup ap­pear­ance af­ter first do­ing so in 2007 in Vi­en­na, Aus­tria, and 11 years lat­er in Berlin, Ger­many.

In 2007, the T&T men’s team was beat­en by Ger­many (9-2), Rus­sia (9-2), Switzer­land (6-1), Aus­tralia (5-1), and the 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 the 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.

The “Ca­lyp­so Stick­men” will face Bel­gium, ranked third in the world, on Thurs­day in their fi­nal pool match, at the end of which the top eight ranked teams from the three pools (the top two in each pool and the two best third-placed teams) will con­test the quar­ter­fi­nals ahead of the semi­fi­nals, fi­nals, and oth­er play­off spots.

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).

Mon­day’s (Feb­ru­ary 3) Re­sults

Group A

South Africa 8 vs Croa­t­ia 6

Aus­tria 6 vs Poland 2

Group B

Ger­many 12 vs Malaysia 4

Iran 5 vs Ar­genti­na 3

Group C

Bel­gium 7 (Phillippe Simar 7th, 10th, 13th, Mal­lo­ry Mag­nant 3rd, Gaeten Dyk­mans 34th, Max­imil­lian Langer 36th, Tan­guy Zim­mer 40th) vs Namib­ia 4 (Dako­ta Hansen 3rd, John-Paul Britz 4th, 8th, Liam Her­manus 14th)

Aus­tralia 7 (Aiden Doo­ley 24th, 25th, 26th, Thomas Miot­to 3rd, 4th, James Knee 9th, Ben Staines 10th) vs T&T 2 (Teague Mar­cano 23rd, Shaquille Daniel 25th)

Tues­day’s (Feb­ru­ary 4) men’s sched­ule

Ar­genti­na vs Malaysia, 4.30 am

Ger­many vs Iran, 5.50 am

South Africa vs Aus­tria 12 noon

Poland vs Croa­t­ia, 1.20 pm