For­mer na­tion­al hock­ey goal­keep­er and cap­tain Glen “Fi­do” Fran­cis is set for a swift re­turn to the na­tion­al coach­ing role.

This af­ter, Fran­cis, the for­mer se­nior men’s na­tion­al hock­ey coach has been tagged as the favourite to be ap­point­ed to the now va­cant se­nior women’s hock­ey coach po­si­tion af­ter the res­ig­na­tion of An­tho­ny “Bumper” Mar­cano.

But Mar­cano who re­cent­ly led the women’s team to a sixth-place fin­ish at the Pan Amer­i­can Cup in Chile in his sec­ond stint as coach and his as­sis­tant coach El­lis Chance have opt­ed to step down due to oth­er work com­mit­ments.

He was first ap­point­ed to the se­nior women’s head coach­ing role back in 2010 for the Com­mon­wealth Games in Del­hi, In­dia be­fore he led the women’s team to a sev­enth-placed fin­ish at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in Guadala­jara, Mex­i­co a year lat­er.

How­ev­er, he was then re­placed by Fran­cis for the 2013 Pan Amer­i­can Cup in Men­doza, Ar­genti­na where the “Ca­lyp­so Stick­women” again placed eighth.

Among his re­cent ac­co­lades, Mar­cano a grad­u­ate of the In­ter­na­tion­al Coach­ing En­rich­ment Cer­tifi­cate Pro­gramme (ICECP) led the women to the sec­ond round of the FIH World League qual­i­fiers as a well as a third-place fin­ish at the 2018 Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games in 2018 in Bar­ran­quil­la, Colom­bia and a sec­ond-place fin­ish to host Pe­ru at last year’s Pan Amer­i­can Chal­lenge in Li­ma which served as a qual­i­fi­er to last month’s FIH World Cup qual­i­fi­er, the Pan Amer­i­can Cup in Chile.

In Chile, the T&T women suf­fered heavy de­feats against the USA (16-0) and Cana­da (13-0) while blank­ing Pe­ru 2-0 in their round-robin group se­ries to qual­i­fy to the quar­ter­fi­nals as third-placed fin­ish­ers.

How­ev­er, in the last-eight clash with Chile, T&T were crushed 11-0 be­fore the Covid-19 virus hit the team camp, forc­ing T&T to de­fault their fifth-placed play­off with Uruguay.

Should 49-year-old Fran­cis take up the po­si­tion he will be do­ing four months af­ter he was re­placed as men’s head coach by Dar­ren Cowie who guid­ed the men to a sev­enth-placed fin­ish in Chile.

Dur­ing his time as men’s head coach, Fran­cis led the team to fourth spot at the last edi­tion of the Pan Amer­i­can Cup in Lan­cast­er, the USA in 2017 af­ter a 3-0 loss to host the USA in the bronze medal.

He al­so coached the team which claimed its best-ever Pan Amer­i­can Cup bronze medal fin­ish in Bramp­ton, Cana­da in 2013 with a 3-1 de­feat of the Amer­i­cans in the third-place match.

Apart from Fran­cis, na­tion­al se­nior men’s team as­sis­tant coach­es Dwain Quan Chan, 39, and Raphael Govia, 49 are al­so ru­moured to be among the can­di­dates.

Quan Chan was coach of the Un­der-21 women’s team at last year’s Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onships while

Govia has served as se­nior men’s coach win­ning the FIH World League Round One in Ja­maica in 2014, and CAC Games, sil­ver that same year in Mex­i­co.