Eng­land-based Teague Mar­cano and Tarell Singh scored two goals each, but it was not enough as the T&T se­nior men’s in­door hock­ey team went un­der to South Africa 8-4 in their lone of­fi­cial in­ter­na­tion­al warm-up match at the Pla­va Re­sort Sports Cen­tre warm-up pitch in Porec, Croa­t­ia, Fri­day ahead of the start of the FIH In­door Hock­ey World Cup on Feb­ru­ary 3 and runs un­til Feb­ru­ary 9.

The match fol­lowed two days of trav­el­ling from Port-of-Spain, a 12-hour stopover in Bar­ba­dos, from where they jour­ney to Lon­don, then to Italy be­fore ar­riv­ing in Croa­t­ia on Wednes­day night (Jan­u­ary 29) and light-warm ses­sion on Thurs­day (Jan­u­ary 30).

Speak­ing af­ter the match against the South Africans who are ranked eighth in the world, Mar­cano who plays for Hol­combe in the Eng­lish Hock­ey League Men's Pre­mier Di­vi­sion said he was sat­is­fied with the run out by his com­pa­tri­ots.

Mar­cano, who along with Mick­ell Pierre and Jor­dan Vieira are ex­pect­ed to lead the T&T at­tack said, "So far its been a good start to the trip. We just fin­ished our first prac­tice match against South Africa whom I think were the per­fect op­po­si­tion if we could have cho­sen one team to play against.

He added, "Just be­cause they bring a mix of speed, skill and struc­ture to the game that we need to get use to play­ing against and what we ex­pect to be go­ing up against in the tour­na­ment."

With re­gards to the mood of the play­ers, Mar­cano said they were all up­beat and ready to give their all for T&T which will be mak­ing its third In­door World Cup ap­pear­ance af­ter first do­ing so in 2007 in Vi­en­na, Aus­tria, and 11 years lat­er in Berlin, Ger­many.

"The feel­ing in­side the team camp is ex­cel­lent and per­son­al­ly I love the bal­ance of the team with the ex­pe­ri­ence guys and youth as well. We are here and work­ing on get­ting our con­nec­tions re­al­ly flow­ing and now it's just for us to get in­to more of the tac­ti­cal de­tails as we pre­pare for our tour­na­ment match­es."

In Croa­t­ia, the Dar­ren Cowie-led “Ca­lyp­so Stick­men” ranked 17th in the world will open their cam­paign ver­sus world fourth-ranked Aus­tralia on Mon­day (Feb­ru­ary 3) be­fore meet­ing 14th-ranked Namib­ia on Wednes­day (Feb­ru­ary 5) and Bel­gium, ranked third in the world, on Thurs­day (Feb­ru­ary 6).

Cap­tain Cowie added, "We re­al­ly love the lev­el of the tem­po and en­er­gy the guys showed against South Africa and the kind of con­fi­dence to play with free­dom and show their own style of hock­ey, so we are re­al­ly ex­cit­ed about what is to come in the tour­na­ment."

Pool A will fea­ture world top-ranked Aus­tria, No 22 Croa­t­ia, No 9 Poland and No 8 South Africa, while No 12 Ar­genti­na, No 5 Ger­many, No 2 Iran, and No 22 Malaysia are in Pool B.

At the end of the three round-robin pool match­es, the top eight ranked teams will con­test the quar­ter­fi­nals ahead of the semi­fi­nals, fi­nal, and oth­er play­off spots.

Head coach Raphael Govia, who will be in charge of the team for a sec­ond straight FIH In­door World Cup af­ter his de­but at the pres­ti­gious event in 2018 in Berlin, Ger­many, where T&T placed tenth, the lo­cals will be ea­ger to im­prove on their pre­vi­ous fin­ish­es.

Speak­ing from Croa­t­ia, Govia said, "To­day's (yes­ter­day) match against the South Africans was a re­al test as they knew what they were go­ing up against in the South Africans who are re­al­ly fast and play a nice one-touch brand of hock­ey, which in the end was a good test.

"In gen­er­al, our show­ing was not bad. We were good in at­tack and we had a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ties in the game. Not mak­ing any ex­cus­es, but South Africa had their own um­pires for the match and for us there were some re­al­ly soft calls that went against us, and that's some­thing we could face as well in the tour­na­ment, so we have to be bet­ter pre­pared for that as well."

Look­ing ahead, Govia said his team will re­sume train­ing to­day where they in­tend to work on some things that were not done well in the match against South Africa.

"We will be get­ting to train­ing on the tour­na­ment pitch and that will be im­por­tant for our guys to get some qual­i­ty time on the sur­face be­fore we go in­to our first match on Mon­day.

"From the match against South Africa we know that we need to be more sol­id in de­fence and close down the mid­dle a lot quick­er and we will get the chance to work on those as­pects of our game.

The T&T squad is a rel­a­tive­ly ex­pe­ri­enced one with Sau­di Ara­bia-based Solomon Ec­cles, goal­keep­er Ron Alexan­der and Mick­ell Pierre, all mem­bers of the two FIH In­door World Cups, first in 2007 in Vi­en­na, Aus­tria and 11 years lat­er in Ger­many.

In 2007, the T&T men’s team were beat­en by Ger­many (9-2), Rus­sia (9-2), Switzer­land (6-1), Aus­tralia (5-1) and Czech Re­pub­lic (6-1) 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 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.

GROUPS

Pool A: No 1 Aus­tria, No 22 Croa­t­ia, No 9 Poland, No 8 South Africa

Pool B: No 12 Ar­genti­na, No 5 Ger­many, No 2 Iran, No 22 Malaysia

Pool C: No 4 Aus­tralia, No 3 Bel­gium, No 14 Namib­ia, No 17 T&T

T&T Team

Ron Alexan­der (goal­keep­er), Kar­los Stephens (goal­keep­er), Arielle Bowen, Solomon Ec­cles, Shaquille Daniel, Lyn­del By­er, Jor­dan Reynos, Jor­dan Vieira, Tarell Singh, Dar­ren Cowie (cap­tain), Mikel Pierre, Teague Mar­cano, Dy­lan Fran­cis, Nicholas Siu Butt.

Tech­ni­cal staff: Raphael Govia (coach), Akim Tou­s­saint (as­sis­tant coach), Kesh­en John­son (man­ag­er), Ak­il Howard (train­er/phys­io­ther­a­pist), Nicholas Baldeosingh (video­g­ra­ph­er).