This coun­try's se­nior women's hock­ey team will be hop­ing to end a run of three straight de­feats in the six-team Sec­ond Round qual­i­fiers of the FIH World Hock­ey League when they bat­tle host Brazil at the De­odoro Field Hock­ey Cen­tre, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 8 am to­day.

Cur­rent­ly, both the "Ca­lyp­so Stick­women," ranked 27th in the world, and Brazil are with­out a point af­ter three match­es each, al­though the host in fifth spot is above T&T due to a su­pe­ri­or goal dif­fer­ence of one goal.

In their three match­es to date, T&T, cap­tained by Alan­na Lewis, has gone un­der to Scot­land (7�0), Chile (6�0) and Uruguay (6�1) while the Brazil­ians were beat­en by USA (6�0), Scot­land (7�0) and Chile (5�1) set­ting the scene for an in­ter­est­ing bat­tle be­tween two teams seek­ing their first points.

Ta­ble lead­ers Chile, with max­i­mum nine points af­ter it al­so swept past Uruguay 2�0, faces third-placed USA which is com­ing off a 2�0 sud­den-death penal­ty shoot-out lost to Scot­land af­ter a 1�1 draw meet at 10 am in a key con­test, while Uruguay and Scot­land meet from 2.30 pm.

To­mor­row, the tour­na­ment will con­clude with T&T and USA flick­ing off the day's ac­tion from 8 am fol­lowed by Scot­land and Chile at 10 am, and Uruguay ver­sus Brazil at 12 noon.

At the end of the six-team round-robin se­ries on Sun­day, the two high­est fin­ish­ers will se­cure places in round three.

Match­es

To­day's match­es:

T&T vs Brazil, 8 am

Chile vs USA, 10 am

Uruguay vs Scot­land, 2.30 pm

Cur­rent stand­ings:

Teams P W WD LD L F A Pts

Chile 3 3 0 0 0 13 1 9

Scot­land 3 2 1 0 0 15 1 8

USA 3 2 0 1 0 10 1 7

Uruguay 3 1 0 0 2 6 6 3

Brazil 3 0 0 0 3 1 18 0

T&T 3 0 0 0 3 1 19 0