NIGEL SI­MON

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

nigel.si­mon@guardian.co.tt

T&T’s se­nior women’s hock­ey team will be aim­ing to seal a tick­et to the FIH Hock­ey5s (five-a-side) Women’s 16-team World Cup in Mus­cat, Oman next Jan­u­ary when they be­gin main draw knock­out play on Thurs­day at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Mona Cam­pus Turf, Kingston, Ja­maica.

The ‘Ca­lyp­so Stick­women’ led by co-cap­tains Krizia Layne-Alexan­der and Sha­ni­ah De Fre­itas will meet Guatemala at 2.45 pm with the win­ners to meet the win­ner of the first quar­ter­fi­nal from 2 pm be­tween USA and Ja­maica in one of two semi­fi­nals from 7.30 pm.

In the oth­er last-eight clash­es, Paraguay meets Brazil, at 3.30 pm, and Uruguay against Cos­ta Ri­ca, at 4.15 pm with both win­ners set to meet in the oth­er main draw semi­fi­nal from 8.15 pm.

From the semi­fi­nals, the two win­ners will qual­i­fy for Sat­ur­day’s de­cider along with seal­ing their tick­ets to Oman, where they will be joined by the win­ner of the third-placed play­off.

So far, the African trio of Namib­ia, South Africa and Zam­bia along with host Oman have qual­i­fied for the World Cup while Ocea­nia, Asia, and Eu­rope are yet to de­ter­mine their three qual­i­fiers each as well.

Dur­ing their round-robin Group B se­ries, T&T edged Ja­maica 2-1, but was then out­classed by Uruguay 8-1 be­fore com­ing from 2-0 down to earn a 2-2 for the sec­ond spot ahead of their meet­ing with Guatemala who end­ed in the third spot in Pool A, af­ter beat­ing Pana­ma 2-1, and Cos­ta Ri­ca 1-0 while tast­ing de­feat ver­sus Pool A win­ners’ USA, 8-0, and Paraguay 2-0.

Speak­ing ahead of the team’s all-im­por­tant must-win clash with Guatemala, Fran­cis was op­ti­mistic about his teams’ chances and said his team was still to play its best game as he an­tic­i­pat­ed a tough test from the Cen­tral Amer­i­cans.

The long-serv­ing T&T coach and for­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er said, “So far, the tour­na­ment has been go­ing pret­ty good for us, but I’m still wait­ing for our best per­for­mance, and I know it’s go­ing to come start­ing with the quar­ter­fi­nals."

He added, “I be­lieve they (na­tion­al women’s team) still have a lot to give, and we are look­ing to medal in the tour­na­ment."

Re­flect­ing on their three match­es so far, a 2-1 win over Ja­maica, fol­lowed by an 8-1 loss to reign­ing world cham­pi­ons Uruguay, and then a 2-2 draw with Brazil to fin­ish sec­ond in Pool B, Fran­cis said he was sat­is­fied with the ef­fort.

Fran­cis said, “Against Ja­maica, some of the girls were a bit over­whelmed with the crowd and the at­mos­phere and we were able to get over that with the 2-1 win which was an ex­cel­lent re­sult.

“Against Uruguay, a world-class team it was tough, and we are far from their stan­dard, but we ac­tu­al­ly got a lot of good stuff out of it, and was the first team to score on them, and put them un­der some pres­sure and al­so got a lot of shots in.

“Just like against Ja­maica, we dom­i­nat­ed against Brazil but we just didn’t put away our chances and they hit us on the counter-at­tack twice.

"So, what was re­al­ly good for me as the coach was see­ing the girls show a lot of grit and de­ter­mi­na­tion to get back in­to the con­test and get the 2-2 draw to seal the sec­ond spot in the group."

For coach Fran­cis, his main con­cern go­ing in­to the match against the Cen­tral Amer­i­cans was the fit­ness lev­el of his team which he said is still not where it should be.

He said, “It’s still not the lev­el that I would have liked, nor is it at the lev­el for in­ter­na­tion­al events and for us as a coun­try, it’s be­com­ing a prob­lem to all our na­tion­al teams in all forms of sports, where the ath­letes al­so need to take it up­on them­selves to live much more healthy lifestyles and show more com­mit­ment to get­ting in top shape.”

Fi­nal Women's Round-Robin Pool stand­ings:

Women:

Pool A

USA*4*4*0*0*29*0*29*12

Paraguay*4*3*0*1*13*5*8*9

Guatemala*4*2*0*2*3*11*-8*6

Cos­ta Ri­ca*4*1*0*3*1*13*-12*3

Pana­ma*4*0*0*4*1*18*-17*0

Pool B

Uruguay*3*3*0*0*25*2*23*9

T&T*3*1*1*1*5*11*-6*4

Brazil*3*0*2*1*4*11*-7*2

Ja­maica*3*0*1*2*4*14*-10*1

To­day's match­es

Quar­ter­fi­nals

USA vs Ja­maica, 2 pm

T&T vs Guatemala, 2.45 pm

Paraguay vs Brazil, 3.30 pm

Uruguay vs Cos­ta Ri­ca, 4.15 pm

Losers Semi­fi­nals

USA/Ja­maica los­er vs T&T/Guatemala los­er, 6 pm

Paraguay/Brazil los­er vs Uruguay/Cos­ta Ri­ca los­er, 6.45 pm

Main Draw Semi­fi­nals

USA/Ja­maica win­ner vs T&T/Guatemala win­ner, 7.30 pm

Paraguay/Brazil win­ner vs Uruguay/Cos­ta Ri­ca win­ner, 8.15 pm

Sat­ur­day's match­es

Sev­enth place play-off, 5 pm

Fifth place play-off, 5.45 pm

Third place play-off, 6.30 pm

Fi­nal, 7.15 pm