Na­tion­al Out­door Hock­ey men’s team coach Dar­ren Cowie has been named cap­tain of the T&T se­nior men’s in­door hock­ey squad for next month’s FIH In­door Hock­ey World Cup in Porec, Croa­t­ia.

The 12-team tour­na­ment will be played at the Za­li­ka Sport Cen­tre from Feb­ru­ary 3-9 with the world 17th-ranked ‘Ca­lyp­so Stick­men’ com­pet­ing in Group C against third-ranked Bel­gium, fourth-ranked Aus­tralia, and 14th-ranked Namib­ia.

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.

In Croa­t­ia, the 17th-ranked team in the world, T&T, first plays Aus­tralia on Feb­ru­ary 3 ahead of their re­main­ing match­es ver­sus Namib­ia on Feb­ru­ary 5 and Bel­gium on Feb­ru­ary 6, and 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.

Fol­low­ing nine months of in­tense train­ing ses­sions, main­ly at the Wood­brook Youth Fa­cil­i­ty in Wood­brook, T&T coach Ra­pa­hel Govia, who will be in charge of the team for a sec­ond World Cup af­ter his de­but at the pres­ti­gious event in 2018 in Berlin, Ger­many, named his fi­nal 14-man squad and three re­serves af­ter Tues­day’s train­ing ses­sion.

The fi­nal squad in­cludes the trio of Sau­di Ara­bia-based Solomon Ec­cles, goal­keep­er Ron Alexan­der, and Mick­ell Pierre, all of whom were part of T&T teams at their pre­vi­ous two FIH In­door World Cups, first in 2007 in Vi­en­na, Aus­tria, and 11 years lat­er in Ger­many.

The oth­er play­ers who were part of the team six years ago and have been in­clud­ed for next month’s tour­na­ment by Govia are Jor­dan Vieira, Shaquille Daniel, and Jor­dan Reynos, while Akim Tou­s­saint, who was part of the first two World Cup teams, re­tired last year and will serve as the as­sis­tant coach. 

The rest of the team fea­tures Eng­land-based stand­out Teague Mar­cano, Dwain Quan Chan, who played at the 2007 edi­tion, and debu­tants Kar­los Stephens (goal­keep­er), Lyn­del By­er, Tarell Singh, Dy­lan Fran­cis, and Nicholas Siu Butt.

The trio of Mal­colm Bap­tiste (goal­keep­er), Do­minic Young, and Arielle Bowen were short-list­ed as the re­serves.

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 to avenge their 

 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.

Speak­ing about the team se­lec­tion and the fi­nal prepa­ra­tions, Govia said, ‘Akim (Tou­s­saint) and I have se­lect­ed the best unit to fight and ral­ly with the best out there. Our team com­pris­es high-IQ play­ers with good ball han­dlers and some fiery young strik­ers.’

Yes, it’s been a tough 50-odd ses­sions for the se­nior men lead­ing up to this cam­paign, but what’s on my mind right now is gelling this unit with some pre-in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion be­fore flick­ing off against Aus­tralia. 

‘He added, “That’s a con­cern for Akim (Tou­s­saint) and my­self, as we un­der­stand that play­ing prac­tice match­es here won’t help us.”

Re­flect­ing on the Pan Amer­i­can qual­i­fiers as his rea­son­ing for want­i­ng to get the team some in­ter­na­tion­al warm-up match­es ahead of the World Cup, Govia said, ‘I will nev­er for­get the fi­nal day in Cal­gary, where they def­i­nite­ly in­creased the cold­ness in the Sev­en Chiefs Are­na, as it was done bla­tant­ly to af­fect our game.’

‘So, we need to ac­cli­ma­tise to Croa­t­ia’s tem­per­a­ture as quick­ly as we can and play some high-in­ten­si­ty match­es against struc­tured teams with skill, as skill lev­els have in­ten­si­fied since our last out­ing in Ger­many, and we are await­ing to see the out­come of our pre-tour re­quests be­fore flick­ing off on Feb­ru­ary 3 in Croa­t­ia. 

About T&T’s op­po­nents, Govia said that so far they have gath­ered in­for­ma­tion on both Namib­ia and Aus­tralia, while they ex­pect to get up to speed about the Bel­gium team ahead of their meet­ing as well.

The Aussies played the least num­ber of match­es to get Croa­t­ia, three in to­tal against New Zealand, win­ning 5-3 and 6-2 while los­ing the third rub­ber 2-3 to top the two-team round-robin se­ries while Namib­ia en­ters the tour­na­ment as In­door Africa Cup win­ners af­ter the de­feat of South Africa 4-3 on penal­ties af­ter a 3-3 draw in the reg­u­la­tion time.

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

TEAM

Ron Alexan­der (goal­keep­er), Kar­los Stephens (goal­keep­er), Dwain Quan Chan, Solomon Ec­cles, Shaquille Daniel, Lyn­del By­er, Jor­dan Reynos, Jor­dan Vieira, Tarell Singh, Dar­ren Cowie (cap­tain), Mikel Pierre, Teague Mar­cano, Dy­lan Fran­cis, Nicholas Siu Butt.

Re­serves: Mal­colm Bap­tiste, Do­minic Young, Arielle Bowen

Tech­ni­cal staff: Raphael Govia (coach), Akim Tou­s­saint (as­sis­tant coach), Kesh­en John­son (man­ag­er), Ak­il Howard (train­er/phys­io­ther­a­pist).