T&T se­nior men’s in­door hock­ey coach Raphael Govia says his team will be head­ing to next month's FIH In­door Hock­ey World Cup in Porec, Croa­t­ia, to rat­tle some cages. The ac­tion will un­fold at the Za­li­ka Sport Cen­tre from Feb­ru­ary 3-9.

The "Ca­lyp­so Stick­men" as the na­tion­al men's hock­ey team are known will com­pete at their third FIH In­door World Cup and will con­test Group C of the 12-team com­pe­ti­tion 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 play 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.

Asked what in­for­ma­tion he and his tech­ni­cal staff had on their op­po­nents so far, Govia said, "We know the Aussies have been play­ing a lot of warm-up match­es and while we don't have that lux­u­ry we need to be ready as can be.

"We then face a tricky en­counter against Namib­ia and from what we know they are a very quick team while we have lit­tle in­for­ma­tion so far on our third op­po­nent Bel­gium, but we are work­ing on get­ting as much as we can."

Last March in Cal­gary, Cana­da, Govia guid­ed the "Ca­lyp­so Stick­men" to their third ap­pear­ance at a 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 7-0 loss in the 2017 fi­nal in Guyana.

Led by Akim Tou­s­saint, T&T, the 2017 Pan Amer­i­can Cup In­door cham­pi­ons en route to qual­i­fy­ing to the 2018 World Cup de­feat­ed Guyana 5-3, and host Cana­da 7-3 but went un­der to 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.

By qual­i­fy­ing to Croa­t­ia, T&T added to its pre­vi­ous World Cup ap­pear­ances in 2007 in Vi­en­na, Aus­tria af­ter qual­i­fy­ing at the Pan Amer­i­ca In­door Cup in Wa­ter­loo, Cana­da de­spite los­ing 5-3 to the host, and then in 2018 in Berlin, Ger­many.

Bel­gium qual­i­fied for the World Cup as the third-placed fin­ish­ers at the ten-team Eu­ro Hock­ey In­door Cham­pi­onship fol­low­ing a 7-6 over world top-ranked Aus­tria.

Ear­li­er in the group phase, Bel­gium had wins over Por­tu­gal 4-2, Czech Re­pub­lic 8-2 and Ukraine 8-3 while they fell to Poland 2-4 for the run­ner-up spot which was fol­lowed by a 5-4 loss to even­tu­al win­ners Ger­many in the semi­fi­nal.

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 de­feat of South Africa 4-3 on penal­ties af­ter a 3-3 draw in the reg­u­la­tion time.

The win by Namib­ia avenged a 5-4 round-robin loss to the South Africans while they crushed Zim­bab­we 12-1 and Botswana 5-0 in their two oth­er pool match­es to fin­ish with six points, three be­hind the un­beat­en South Africans.

De­spite be­ing con­sid­ered as un­der­dogs in their four-team se­ries, a con­fi­dent Govia said he and his team will not be go­ing to Croa­t­ia just to make up num­bers."

He said, "We are not go­ing there just to show up. But we are go­ing there to rat­tle some cages, show­case the tal­ent of T&T hock­ey and to win match­es.

"I have al­ready told the play­ers we are not go­ing there to rock back and fold up, That is not the style of the coach­ing staff and sure­ly not among our pri­or­i­ties as we want to go there and rep­re­sent the best of our hock­ey.

"We are go­ing there to play at­tack­ing hock­ey, with strong and res­olute de­fend­ing and at the same time en­ter­tain."

With less than a month to go be­fore his team flicks off their cam­paign, Govia, speak­ing ahead of Wedne­day's train­ing ses­sion at the Wood­brook Youth Fa­cil­i­ty on Hamil­ton-Hold­er Street in Port-of-Spain said his team will be ramp­ing up their ses­sions as they seek to make a se­ri­ous im­pact third time around.

Cur­rent­ly, 21 play­ers are still in train­ing with the fi­nal 12 mem­bers set to be rat­i­fied by the T&T Hock­ey Board lat­er this week. Among the play­ers still in train­ing are the trio of Solomon Ec­cles, goal­keep­er Roan Alexan­der and for­ward Mick­ell Pierre, all of whom were part of T&T teams at their pre­vi­ous two FIH In­door World Cup ap­pear­ances while Tou­s­saint was al­so part of the team in 2007 and 2018 but re­tired ahead of this year's tour­na­ment.

In ad­di­tion to the trio, the play­ers in train­ing in­clude Jor­dan Vieira, Jor­dan Reynos, Kar­los Stephen, Dy­lan Fran­cis, Shaquille Daniel, Do­minic Young, Ar­rielle Bowen, Tariq Mar­cano and Lyn­dell By­er all part of the team which qual­i­fied in Cana­da last March while vet­er­an duo Dar­ren Cowie and Dwain Quan Chan have al­so made their re­turn.

An up­beat Govia added, "We are go­ing in­to our 50th train­ing at Wood­brook and we will be in­ten­si­fy­ing our train­ing as we need to get sharp­er ahead of our open­ing match of the tour­na­ment against Aus­tralia which we know is not go­ing to be an easy one."

Govia not­ed that his team's main wor­ry ahead of the tour­na­ment is fi­nal­is­ing warm-up match­es for his play­ers which has so far proven a bit dif­fi­cult.

He ex­plained, "For us, it has been tough in try­ing to fi­nalise some warm-up match­es in Eng­land or Hol­land due to the bad weath­er they have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing out there which has forced a lot of their ac­tiv­i­ties to be con­test­ed at their in­door venues which are now booked up."

As a last al­ter­na­tive Govia said he has reached out to a close as­so­ciate in Cana­da with the hope that four match­es against the best play­ers avail­able there will be fi­nalised soon as part of their fi­nal prepa­ra­tions be­fore they head over to Croa­t­ia.

2025 Men's FIH In­door Hock­ey World Cup Croa­t­ia:

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

Train­ing squad: Ron Alexan­der, Kar­los Stephens, Dwain Quan Chan, Dar­ren Cowie, Solomon Ec­cles, Jor­dan Reynos, Jor­dan Vieira, Shaquille Daniel, Mikel Pierre, Teague Mar­cano, Tar­rell Singh, Dy­lan Fran­cis, Lyn­dell By­er, Joel Daniel, Arielle Bowen, Nicholas Siu Butt, Daniel By­er, Aiden De Gannes, Reiza Ho­sein, Do­minic Young, Mal­colm Bap­tiste.

Tech­ni­cal Staff: Raphael Govia (coach), Akim Tou­s­saint (as­sis­tant coach), Kesh­en John­son (man­ag­er), Derek Ash­by-Williams (mas­sage ther­a­pist/train­er), Nicholas Baldeosingh (video­g­ra­ph­er).