T&T se­nior men's hock­ey squad bowed out of con­tention for a spot at the 2023 FIH Odisha World Cup in In­dia af­ter a third straight de­feat in Pool B of the Pan Amer­i­can Cup at the Prince of Wales Coun­try Club, La Reina, San­ti­a­go, Chile on Mon­day.

Need­ing to win their fi­nal round-robin match against Cana­da to have a chance at se­cur­ing the third spot in the four-team pool, the Dar­ren Cowie-coached ‘Ca­lyp­so Stick­men” put up a brave and spir­it­ed ef­fort be­fore falling to a 5-2 de­feat.

The loss added to T&T’s 4-3 loss to the USA and a 4-2 re­sult to Mex­i­co in their pre­vi­ous match­es.

The Cana­di­ans en­tered the match on the back of a 2-1 loss to the USA af­ter clob­ber­ing Mex­i­co 11-1 in their open­er and start­ed the brighter of both teams with Oliv­er Scholfield scor­ing a field goal in the fifth minute.

T&T goal­keep­er An­drey Rocke then pulled off a few stun­ning saves from penal­ty-cor­ner set plays to keep his team in the match.

How­ev­er, Rocke was even­tu­al­ly beat­en by Gor­don John­ston in the 12th minute as the North Amer­i­cans dou­bled their ad­van­tage at 2-0.

In a com­plete re­ver­sal to the first quar­ter, the sec­ond 15 minute pe­ri­od saw a much more ag­gres­sive T&T as they dom­i­nat­ed their op­po­nents from the get-go.

T&T’s per­sis­tence brought re­ward in the 17th minute when cap­tain Akim Tou­s­saint whipped a shot past goal­keep­er An­toni Kindler on his first post fol­low­ing a counter-at­tack spear­head­ed by Eng­land-based Teague Mar­cano.

And four min­utes be­fore the half-time whis­tle Mar­cano capped off an­oth­er fast-break in­volv­ing Shaquille Daniel and Mar­cano by fir­ing in­to the far cor­ner of the goal, off the base of the post to even the con­test at 2-2.

The see-saw con­test swung back in Cana­da’s favour in the third pe­ri­od with John­ston scor­ing in the 36th from an­oth­er penal­ty-cor­ner that went through the pads of Rocke, and a 44th-minute penal­ty-stroke to com­plete his hat-trick while Matthew Bar­nett net­ted in the 40th as they took com­mand of the con­test at 5-2.

With the de­feat, T&T fin­ished bot­tom of Pool B with­out a point while Cana­da moved to joint top with USA on six points, ahead of the lat­ter’s fi­nal pool match with Mex­i­co.

Al­so on Mon­day, in Pool A, Chile faced Brazil for sec­ond spot ahead of both teams quar­ter­fi­nal crossover match­es.

Ar­genti­na de­feat­ed Brazil 10-0 and Chile 3-2 to top the three-team pool with max­i­mum six points and se­cure the au­to­mat­ic semi­fi­nal spot.

At the end of round-robin play, the top team from each pool will ad­vance to the main draw semi­fi­nals on Jan­u­ary 28, while the sec­ond and third-placed teams will meet in cross-over quar­ter­fi­nals to de­ter­mine the oth­er semi­fi­nal qual­i­fiers two days ear­li­er.

The two semi­fi­nal win­ners will then se­cure the two Pan Amer­i­can spots to the 2023 FIH Odisha World Cup in In­dia.

<Ca­lyp­so Stick­women face Chile for semis spot>

T&T women’s hock­ey team will start as un­der­dogs when they meet Chile from 5.30 pm to­day in the sec­ond of two quar­ter­fi­nal match­es.

This af­ter the An­tho­ny Mar­cano-coached T&T women end­ed third in Pool B with three points from three match­es, hav­ing blanked Pe­ru 2-0 in their sec­ond match.

How­ev­er, the youth­ful T&T squad were pun­ished 16-0 by the USA in their open­er and then closed out pool play with a 13-0 loss to Cana­da and is ex­pect­ed to face an­oth­er on­slaught against Chile, who af­ter los­ing 4-0 to Ar­genti­na in their Pool A open­er beat Uruguay by the same score for the sec­ond spot in their pool.

In to­day’s open­ing quar­ter­fi­nal, Cana­da who ran out 14-0 vic­tors over Pe­ru and went un­der to USA 3-1 in their oth­er match will fan­cy their chances against Uruguay from 3 pm.

The win­ner of the Chile/T&T match will meet USA in

Thurs­day’s semi­fi­nal while

Ar­genti­na awaits the Cana­da/Uruguay win­ner.

Both semi­fi­nal win­ners and even­tu­al tour­na­ment third-placed fin­ish­er will qual­i­fy to the 2022 Women's FIH Hock­ey World Cup card­ed for Ter­ras­sa, Spain and Am­stelveen, the Nether­lands from Ju­ly 1 to 17.