The Akim Tou­s­saint-led T&T se­nior men's hock­ey squad will go in­to their open­ing Pool B match of the Pan Amer­i­can Cup against the USA as heavy un­der­dogs at the Prince of Wales Coun­try Club in Las Reina, San­ti­a­go, Chile from 1 pm on Thurs­day.

The Dar­ren Cowie-coached “Ca­lyp­so Stick­men” ranked 37th in the world will face the 24th-ranked Amer­i­cans in the sec­ond of four match­es on sched­ule to­day as they be­gin their quest to be among the two qual­i­fiers from the eight-team com­pe­ti­tion to the 2023 FIH Odisha World Cup in In­dia.

How­ev­er, prepa­ra­tions for the tour­na­ment by Cowie and his play­ers have not gone ac­cord­ing to plan, putting the team at a dis­ad­van­tage go­ing in­to their open­er with the USA, who were 3-0 vic­tors the last time both teams faced off in the 2017 edi­tion third-placed play­off in Lan­cast­er, USA.

Due to the late re­lease of fund­ing by the Min­istry of Sports on Fri­day last, the T&T Hock­ey Board were late in fi­nal­is­ing trav­el­ling arrange­ments and flights for the team with some mem­bers leav­ing on Sun­day, then Mon­day via Pana­ma City and Mi­a­mi re­spec­tive­ly.

How­ev­er, while the play­ers who trav­elled via Pana­ma ar­rived on sched­ule, the con­tin­gent of play­ers who left for the tour­na­ment via Mi­a­mi was de­layed for 24 hours in the USA and on­ly ar­rived in Chile on Tues­day night, with the fi­nal group touch­ing down on Wednes­day morn­ing in South Amer­i­ca.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Cowie said that de­spite all the hic­cups faced the team was able to get some good news with all the play­ers who ar­rived on Tues­day night re­turn­ing neg­a­tive PCR test re­sults al­low­ing them to join the team im­me­di­ate­ly.

He added,” Hope­ful­ly the group that just land­ed (Wednes­day morn­ing) will get their re­sults lat­er to­day and will be able to join us for our on­ly train­ing ses­sion which is card­ed for 9 pm tonight (last night).

He added, “So hope­ful­ly the play­ers get cleared in time and can join the ses­sion, but we know for cer­tain that as­sis­tant coach Dwain Quan Chan prob­a­bly won’t get cleared in time due to his late ar­rival.

“That’s why we tried to plan to try and get here a week be­fore to try and gauge all those kinds of dif­fer­ent things and un­planned cir­cum­stances that can pop up.”

“So I guess the fact that we weren’t able to get out of Trinidad in time has caused all these de­lays and put us on the back foot more than we would have liked.

De­spite the prob­lems faced, Cowie said he was still hap­py with the bunch of play­ers at his dis­pos­al as they have been re­silient.

“The sev­en guys who ar­rived in Chile on the week­end were still able to have some train­ing ses­sions led by one of the se­nior play­ers Lyn­don By­er and go­ing in­to the open­er the guys still have their heads on and are fo­cused on com­pet­ing.

“It’s go­ing to be dif­fi­cult for us but I’m re­al­ly hap­py with their mind­set as they are fo­cused on the task at hand, end­ed Cowie.

The 18-man squad was forced in­to one late change be­fore leav­ing T&T with Fa­ti­ma’s Roshane Hamil­ton be­ing added to af­ter Jo­van Wren of Malvern SC re­turned a pos­i­tive PCR test on the week.

The “Ca­lyp­so Stick­men” will al­so face Mex­i­co on Jan­u­ary 22, and Cana­da, two days lat­er both from 10.45 am to close out round-robin play.

Three-time win­ners Ar­genti­na, Brazil, Chile and Pe­ru com­prise Pool A of the com­pe­ti­tion which is the re­gion's qual­i­fi­er to the 16-team World Cup.

At the end of round-robin play, the top two teams in each pool will ad­vance to the main draw semi­fi­nals on Jan­u­ary 26, while the sec­ond and third-placed teams will meet in cross-over quar­ter­fi­nals to de­ter­mine the oth­er semi­fi­nal qual­i­fiers.

The two semi­fi­nal win­ners will then se­cure the two Pan Amer­i­can spots to the 16-team World Cup.

T&T Team

Akim Tou­s­saint (c), An­drey Rocke (GK), Mal­colm Bap­tiste (GK), Aidan De Gannes, Lyn­dell By­er, Jor­dan Reynos, Mick­ell Pierre, Jor­dan Vieira, Tariq Mar­cano, Teague Mar­cano, Shaquille Daniel, Joel Daniel, Ghard­el El­cock, Ethan Reynos, Caleb Guis­sepi, Roshane Hamil­ton, Daniel By­er, Tarell Singh.

Trav­el­ling Re­serves: Shawn Phillip, Jacques Poon-Lewis (GK)

Thurs­day's Match­es

Cana­da vs Mex­i­co, 10.45 am

USA vs T&T, 1 pm

Ar­genti­na vs Brazil, 3.15 pm

Chile vs Pe­ru, 5.30 pm