T&T youth net­ballers suf­fered loss­es in their open­ing match­es in the Fast5 com­pe­ti­tion at the Trin­ba­go2023 Com­mon­wealth Youth Games at the Shaw Park Com­plex in To­ba­go, on Tuesday.

The lo­cal team were beat­en by Cana­da, 22-11, in their open­ing match in their af­ter­noon clash and lat­er went un­der to Scot­land by an even big­ger mar­gin of de­feat, 37-14.

The lo­cal team was out­played by the Cana­di­ans in their first Group A match de­spite mak­ing a good start, lead­ing 4-1 at the end of the first pe­ri­od. The sec­ond ses­sion was a dis­as­ter as T&T failed to net a goal while Cana­da poured in 10 to lead 11-4 at half­time.

In the third pe­ri­od, T&T re­gained some com­po­sure and net­ted three goals com­pared to Cana­da’s eight to trail by 12 (19-7) head­ing in­to the fourth and fi­nal ses­sion. The host team outscored the Cana­di­ans 4-3 but it was not enough to over­come the dou­ble-fig­ure deficit es­tab­lished in the pre­vi­ous ses­sion and fell to an 11-goal de­feat.

The T&T net­ballers’ strug­gles con­tin­ued against Scot­land in their sec­ond Group A match-up. The Scot­tish net­ballers jumped to an ear­ly 10-3 lead in the first pe­ri­od and their dom­i­nance con­tin­ued in­to the sec­ond ses­sion to push fur­ther ahead 24-5 at the halfway mark.

How­ev­er, T&T did a much bet­ter job de­fen­sive­ly in the sec­ond half with the host coun­try hold­ing Scot­land to five goals while net­ting two, but re­mained with a huge moun­tain to climb, trail­ing 29-7 at the end of the third pe­ri­od.

T&T had their best shoot­ing in the fourth pe­ri­od, al­most match­ing the Scot­tish team goal-for-goal (7-8), but the host team still had to set­tle for the 23-goal loss.

T&T will play un­beat­en Aus­tralia in their fi­nal Group A match at 1.15 pm to­day (Wednes­day).

Aus­tralia sealed wins against Scot­land (29-8) and Cana­da (54-6).

In oth­er match­es Tues­day, South Africa topped Eng­land 40-30, and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines fell to an 18-16 de­feat to Botswana in Group B be­fore press time.

In Wednes­day’s oth­er match­es, Scot­land will face Cana­da in Group A, and in Group B, South Africa takes on St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and Eng­land ver­sus Botswana.

Al­so sched­uled Wednes­day are the semi­fi­nals from 4.15 pm fol­low­ing the fifth to eighth semi­fi­nals place­ment match­es.