Nigel Si­mon

Gab­ba Singh scored a beaver-trick as hosts Cana­da slammed T&T's se­nior men's hock­ey team 9-1 in their penul­ti­mate match at the Four-Na­tion Clas­sic host­ed by Field Hock­ey Cana­da in cel­e­bra­tion of its 20th an­niver­sary on Fri­day night.Go­ing in­to the clash at Wright Field, Uni­ver­si­ty of British Co­lum­bia, Van­cou­ver, T&T was look­ing for its first win in three match­es against the Cana­di­ans, who won the first two en­coun­ters, 2-0 and 4-2.

But as ear­ly as the sixth minute, Cana­da opened the scor­ing through Mark Pear­son be­fore De­vohn Tex­eira, David Jame­son and Iain Smythe added their names to the score board for a 4-0 on­ly a quar­ter of the way in­to the match.Scott Tup­per top cor­ner drag flick gave Cana­da a 5-0 ad­van­tage in the 21st minute of play be­fore T&T stand­out, Kwand­wane Browne net­ted a goal in the 23rd minute to give T&T some hope.A bro­ken cor­ner lead to a scram­ble in front of the net and Browne made no mis­take beat­ing a help­less Dave Carter in goal for Cana­da.How­ev­er, T&T's chances of a sec­ond-half re­vival was dealt a sev­er blow when Singh scored one minute be­fore half time to give Cana­da a 6-1 lead.

Three more field goals from Singh, and two from Pear­son (hat-trick), in the sec­ond half gave Cana­da a bril­liant 9-1 win over their Pan-Am com­peti­tors and im­proved its record to 5-0 in the three-team tour­na­ment ahead of its fi­nal match against Chile to­day from 4.30pm .Last night, the lo­cal men's team end­ed their tour­na­ment against Chile, hav­ing won their pre­vi­ous du­els, 4-3 and 3-1 to lie sec­ond on the ta­ble with six points.The na­tion­al women's team al­so went af­ter a first vic­to­ry in six match­es last night when they came up against Japan ahead of to­day's play­offs.