T&T’s se­nior men’s in­door hock­ey team dubbed the 'Ca­lyp­so Stick­men' sur­ren­dered a 2-0 first-quar­ter lead in a 6-4 loss to Malaysia in their 11th to 12th play­off to end the FIH In­door Hock­ey World Cup at the Pla­va Re­sort Sports Cen­tre in Porec, Croa­t­ia, on Sun­day.

Go­ing in­to the match-up, both teams were in search of their first win, and af­ter two ear­ly saves from T&T's Ron Alexan­der, the Raphael Govia-coached 'Ca­lyp­so Stick­men' were first to get on the score­sheet when Mick­ell Pierre, ap­pear­ing in his third World Cup fired in­to the roof of the net from an acute an­gle in the sev­enth minute for a 1-0 lead.

With a minute left in the open­ing ten-minute quar­ter, Malaysia's Muhamad Azhar had his team's best chance but was de­nied at point-blank range by an alert Alexan­der in the T&T goal, and from the re­bound, T&T mount­ed a fast-break start­ed by cap­tain Dar­ren Cowie who laid off a pass to Jor­dan Vieira be­fore he re­turned a clever pass to his part­ner to fin­ish in­to an open net for a 2-0 cush­ion at the end of the quar­ter.

Two min­utes in­to the sec­ond quar­ter, Pierre wast­ed a gold­en chance to ex­tend T&T's lead to 3-0 when he fired wide of an open goal.

He and his team­mates were made to pay when Ashra Ham­sani drib­bled across the T&T goal­mouth be­fore his re­versed stick ef­fort whisked past Alexan­der and in­to the bot­tom far cor­ner for a 2-1 deficit.

A few sec­onds lat­er, an un­marked Ham­sani drilled a low shot through the legs of Alexan­der as the Malaysians caught T&T de­fend­ers off-guard af­ter a foul was called.

In the 17th minute, Malaysia then got their first lead at 3-2 when they cap­i­talised on some more slop­py de­fence work by T&T, with Kahliq Hamirin clev­er­ly lift­ing an ef­fort past the ad­vanc­ing Alexan­der.

T&T got back on lev­el terms on the stroke of the half-time buzzer when they made full use of a play­er ad­van­tage af­ter a green card was is­sued to Fir­daus Omar, with Teague Marac­no div­ing full stretch to con­nect with an­oth­er Vieira as­sist from a counter-at­tack to set up an in­ter­est­ing sec­ond half and all to play for.

At the start of the third pe­ri­od, Cowie al­most put his team back in front on­ly for his goal­ward ef­fort to be de­flect­ed by a Malaysia de­fend­er on­to the cross­bar, but it didn't hurt his team as Vieira then slapped home his team's fourth item a few sec­onds lat­er to lead 4-3.

T&T's lead was short­lived though as Malaysia fired home the equalis­er through Na­j­mi Ja­zlan from a penal­ty-cor­ner set play af­ter Cowie was whis­tled for an in­fring­ment in the 22nd.

Vieira al­most re­gained the lead a minute lat­er but his ef­fort just missed the far post to leave both teams lev­el go­ing in­to the fourth pe­ri­od.

Three min­utes in­to the fi­nal quar­ter, Hamirin re­stored Malaysia's slim lead at 5-4 when he split T&T play­ers Shaquille Daniel and Cowie and fired un­der Alexan­der.

Faridzul Mo­hammed then ex­tend­ed Malaysia's lead when an at­tempt­ed in­ter­cep­tion by Vieira was de­flect­ed in­to his path and his one-time shot was too quick for Alexan­der as the ball went through his legs for a 6-4 ad­van­tage af­ter which, T&T failed to re­cov­er.

With less than two min­utes rem­i­naing, Alexan­der was re­placed by an ex­tra out field play­er, but T&T could not find a way back and end­ed with a fifth straight loss from as many out­ings in the tour­na­ment.

The loss for T&T added to 7-2 de­feats against fourth-ranked Aus­tralia and third-ranked Bel­gium, and 6-3 against 14th-ranked Namib­ia in Group C round-robin play be­fore a 12-3 loss to host Croa­t­ia.

T&T al­so fin­ished 12th on de­but in 2007, af­ter they were were beat­en by Ger­many (9-2), Rus­sia (9-2), Switzer­land (6-1), Aus­tralia (5-1) and Czech Re­pub­lic (6-1) in pool play be­fore los­ing 4-2 to South Africa in their 11th to 12th po­si­tion play­off.

At their sec­ond ap­pear­ance in 2018, T&T went un­der to the Czech Re­pub­lic (7-2), Poland (11-5), Aus­tralia (7-6), and Ger­many (10-2) while they picked up their first-ever World Cup win 6-4 over Kaza­khstan in pool play. How­ev­er, in the play­off for the ninth spot, T&T was edged out by Rus­sia 3-2.

Ger­many added to the pre­vi­ous tri­umphs in 2003, 2007, and 2011 when they bet­tered two-time win­ner and de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Aus­tria (2018 and 2023) 2-1 via penal­ty-stroke shoot-out af­ter an en­ter­tain­ing 6-6 dead­lock while South Africa edged Bel­gium 6-5 for the bronze.

Yes­ter­day's re­sults

11th-12th: Malaysia 6 vs T&T 4

Ninth: Croa­t­ia 7 vs Ar­genti­na 1

Sev­enth: Iran 5 vs Namib­ia 4

Fifth: Poland 6 vs Aus­tralia 1

Bronze: South Africa 6 vs Bel­gium 5

Fi­nal: Ger­many 6 vs Aus­tria 6 - Ger­many won 2-1 on penal­ty-stroke shoot-out