Guyana’s indoor developmental hockey team, Supernova, shook off the disappointment of another narrow semi-final loss to finish third in the UWI Indoor Tournament on Sunday in the twin-island republic.
Coming against a very experienced Trinidad and Tobago Police Force (TTPF) side in the semi-final, the young Guyanese were unlucky to see two of their early shots hit the uprights, before former Trinidad and Tobago national player Wayne Legerton converted two penalty corners in the third and 15th minutes to send Police into the half up 2-0.
Supernova’s superior speed and fitness began to turn the tide in the second half, although Omar Hopkinson’s penalty corner flick was initially saved, he slammed home the rebound to make it 1-2 in the 21st minute.
Warren Williams then equalised in the 26th minute after finishing off a blistering Jamarj Assanah counter attack. Honours remained even until Legerton converted his third penalty corner with 20 seconds left on the clock to score what seemed to be the game winner.
However, an alert and intelligent Meshach Sargeant sprinted into the goal, retrieved the ball and put it onto the centre line and attacked the TTPF scoring area which drew an intentional foul and penalty corner just as time expired.
Hopkinson once again stepped up when his team needed him most and delivered the tie with a bullet of a drag flick into the top left corner. The resulting shootout ended tied on 1-1 after the allotted three rounds and it took an additional five rounds of sudden death before TTPF won 4-3.
The clearly disappointed youngsters didn’t have much time to feel sorry for themselves as they had to return to the court 35 minutes later to take on Paragon, the same team who had defeated them in the Ventures third place playoff 5-3.
However, this time around it was the Guyanese who took home third place 5-4, through a Kareem McKenzie goal and doubles from Hopkinson and Williams.
In his assessment of the day’s matches, national coach Robert Fernandes said: “I thought we had our chances to take the lead early against TTPF in the semi-final. We discussed limiting circle entries in our pre-game briefing because we knew how deadly Legerton was on penalty corners, so it was disappointing to fall behind in the fashion that we did.”
He added, “However, the boys showed great spirit to fight back and instead of dropping their shoulders and conceding defeat after TTPF scored with seconds left, they were alert enough to restart quickly and give themselves the opportunity to tie the game.
They experienced the longest shootout I’ve ever witnessed and then followed that up by defeating a team that they lost to just a week ago. I’m grateful that they have been exposed to such a variety of game situations in 11 days, this experience will be invaluable to them moving forward.”
