Roger St Rose, pres­i­dent of the T&T Hock­ey Board (TTHB) has wel­comed the re­turn of the sport via its Out­door sea­son af­ter a three-year hia­tus.

St Rose was speak­ing at the of­fi­cial open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of Out­door Hock­ey in T&T at the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice Sports Club Bar­racks Ground, West­ern Main Road, St James on Sun­day which was fol­lowed by the teams' march past, and the men's and women's Open Di­vi­sion Hock­ey5s tour­na­ment.

Hock­ey5s is a short­er, faster ver­sion of the tra­di­tion­al game, and the teams play with five play­ers each (in­clud­ing the goal­keep­er), un­like reg­u­lar hock­ey where each side con­sists of 11 play­ers.

A Hock­ey5s play­ing field is around half the size of a reg­u­lar hock­ey field and is ful­ly sur­round­ed (side lines and back lines) by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10 cm high boards, sim­i­lar to that of in­door, to en­cour­age con­tin­u­ous and dy­nam­ic play.

This is the newest for­mat in the sport and there is the up­com­ing Pan Amer­i­can Cup, a Hock­ey5s World Cup Qual­i­fi­er, sched­uled for June 4-11 in Kingston, Ja­maica where T&T teams will seek to qual­i­fy for the in­au­gur­al World Cup.

Among the clubs ex­pect­ed to com­pete are Mag­no­lias, Ven­tures, Paragon, Malvern, Notre Dame, Po­lice, De­fence Force, Queen’s Park Crick­et Club, and Shape.

Speak­ing at the open­ing, At­tor­ney-At-Law St Rose said, "Af­ter four years due to the COVID-19 and some chal­lenges with ac­quir­ing a new ar­ti­fi­cial sur­face we got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to use the St James Po­lice Bar­racks venue to start the open­ing of the Out­door sea­son.

"The com­pe­ti­tion to­day (Sun­day) is a hy­brid of a nor­mal hock­ey tour­na­ment as nor­mal­ly it's an 11-a-side or six-a-side, but the FIH has a new for­mat called the Hock­ey5s, so it's con­tin­u­ous hock­ey and it's ex­cit­ing and we are open­ing the sea­son with this for­mat be­cause we will have our teams (men and women se­nior) go­ing to Ja­maica for the qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment to the FIH Hock­ey5s Worlds in June.

'The of­fi­cial sea­son will not get go­ing un­til the next two to three weeks and this will be on a nor­mal league ba­sis as such.

With re­gards to the num­ber of teams com­pet­ing at the open­ing, St Rose, the first um­pire from T&T to of­fi­ci­ate at the Olympics in the 1996 At­lanta Games and the FIH World Cup not­ed that there were few­er teams tak­ing part than be­fore, which could be put down due to no hock­ey be­ing played lo­cal­ly in re­cent time, mak­ing play­ers and teams seem dis­in­ter­est­ed.

To ad­dress this sit­u­a­tion the TTHB boss said, "We are hop­ing that with the start of the Out­door sea­son and with the De­vel­op­ment Pro­gram that with­in a year or two we should be get­ting some en­thu­si­as­tic play­ers com­ing through and build­ing back the struc­ture that we had be­fore.

"So, we are hop­ing just like most oth­er sports that re­sumed af­ter the pan­dem­ic to re­coup the play­ers we have lost based on our de­vel­op­ment pro­gram which is be­ing restart­ed with the help of the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT) where we tar­get schools and com­mu­ni­ties, so we are hop­ing to build back our base based on sus­tain­abil­i­ty and ca­pac­i­ty in our sport via these means.

"And in a year or two we should have a good strong de­vel­op­ment pro­gram on­go­ing so we will have a feed­er for the clubs lo­cal­ly go­ing for­ward," ex­plained St Rose, a mem­ber of Malvern Sports Club.

A mem­ber of the Of­fi­cials Com­mit­tee of the Fed­er­a­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Hock­ey (FIH) and the Um­pires Com­mit­tee of the Pan Amer­i­can Hock­ey Fed­er­a­tion (PAHF) St Rose was al­so op­ti­mistic that the sport will soon re­turn to its home at the Na­tion­al Hock­ey Cen­tre in Tacarigua with the month of Ju­ly the set dead­line.

Back in 2019, the lo­cal hock­ey fra­ter­ni­ty was ex­pect­ing a spank­ing new $1,356,000 As­tro­Turf sur­face, its first in 14 years for the start of the 2020 T&T Hock­ey Board sea­son af­ter er Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho, chair­man of the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT) con­firmed the ar­rival of the turf from Ger­man sup­pli­er Poly­tan, and the com­mence­ment of the re­lay­ing of the sur­face.

The is­sue sur­round­ing the turf resur­faced fol­lowed an as­sess­ment by a spe­cial­ist that the elas­tic bands of the sub-base were good enough to be part of the new in­stal­la­tion of the top sur­face be­ing done by Poly­tan, the Ger­many-based man­u­fac­tur­er of syn­thet­ic sports turfs, which in the end turned out to be an in­ac­cu­rate as­sess­ment.

Since then the lo­cal hock­ey fra­ter­ni­ty and more so the na­tion­al teams and lo­cal clubs have had to miss out on com­pe­ti­tions, lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly which has led to a de­crease in the play­er pool at all lev­els.

Com­ment­ing on the is­sue, St Rose, who was ap­point­ed TTHB pres­i­dent in De­cem­ber 2021 un­op­posed said, "Over the past few years through the Sports Com­pa­ny we have got­ten back the im­pe­tus, and the mon­ey through SporTT to re­lay the car­pet (ar­ti­fi­cial turf) with new con­trac­tors.

"So the process has start­ed in terms of re­lay­ing the sur­face with a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of com­ple­tion date of Ju­ly 2023. So, with­in the next few months, we should have a new sur­face prop­er­ly re­layed and pre­pared for nor­mal out­door-size field hock­ey.

"In terms of our lo­cal out­door com­pe­ti­tion we are al­so hop­ing to look at some oth­er venues to have much more op­tions for match­es dur­ing the sea­son," said St Rose.