Pierre, Rocke earn sudden-death win

Mickell Pierre converted a penalty-shootout as T&T defeated rivals USA 4-3 on sudden-death penalties after a 1-1 draw for their first win of the Second Round of FIH World Hockey League qualifiers at the Deodoro Field Hockey Centre, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, yesterday.

The 34th world ranked “Calypso Stickmen” led by 28-year-old Darren Cowie entered the match with a 0-3 record after losses to Argentina (9-2), Chile (4-0) and South Africa (10-2) and were underdogs against the 29th ranked Americans who fell to Chile (1-0) and South Africa (6-1) while beating Brazil 5-0 in their previous three matches.

After a tense opening period USA took the lead through its captain, Patrick Harris in the 22nd beating goalkeeper Andrey Rocke and despite coming close via few penalty-corners, T&T had to wait until a minute from the end of the 70-minute contest to draw level thanks to the nippy Akim Toussaint to send the match into penalties where Pierre and Rocke, who was a colossus in goal were the heroes.

During the first five penalties, USA started well and scored their first three with Harris, Jonathan Ginolfi and Ajai Dhadwal scoring while for T&T, Dwain Quan Chan in between misses from Toussaint and Solomon Eccles. 

With a chance to seal victory for his team Tyler Sundeen muffed his chance for USA while Pierre converted to keep T&T alive. Ian Scally also failed to score for USA as the pressure mounted while Marcus James then scored to get T&T even and send the match into sudden-death penalty-strokes where Harris was off target this time for his team, leaving Pierre with a chance to win it for T&T, which he did by beating goalkeeper Robert Christopher.

The win secured T&T’s first points of the tournament, one behind USA with tomorrow’s matches against host Brazil and Argentina respectively.

Argentina, the South American champions and ranked tenth in the world moved to brink of qualification for the Third Round with a 4-2 win over 12th ranked South Africa for its fourth win from as many matches and 12 points, three ahead of the Proteas and Chile, which got three late goals to beat Brazil, 3-1.

Today is a rest day for the men, while tomorrow it will conclude with Chile versus South Africa from 8am followed by Argentina and USA an 10am, and T&T against 33rd ranked Brazil from 2.30pm.

At the end of the series, the top two teams will advance to the Third Round or the World League men’s semifinals, which will take place in Rotterdam, Holland from June 13 to 23, and in Johor Bahru, Malaysia from June 29-July 7.

Results
 USA 1 (Patrick Harris 22nd) vs T&T 1 (Akim Toussaint 69th) - T&T won 4-3 on sudden-death penalty-strokes.
 Chile 3 (own goal 62nd, Sven Richter 64th, Sebastian Kapsch 69th) vs Brazil 1 (Matheus Ferreira 70th).
 Argentina 4 (Augustin Mazzilli 4th, Rodrigo Nicolas Vila 10th, Facundo Callioni 38th, Pedro Ibarra 53rd) vs South Africa 2 (Lloyd Norris-Jones 40th, Clinton Panther 47th).

Standings
Teams    P    W    WD    LD    L    F    A    Pts
Argentina    4    4    0    0    0    29    4    12
South Africa    4    3    0    0    1    26    7    9
Chile    4    3    0    0    1    8    7    9
USA    4    1    0    1    2    6    7    3
T&T    4    0    1    0    3    5    24    2
Brazil    4    0    0    0    4    1    27    0

Fixtures
Tomorrow
 Chile vs South Africa, 8 am
 Argentina vs USA, 10 am
 Brazil vs T&T, 2.30 pm.