Guyana has been overachieving –– GHB President Philip Fernandes

Just last week, Guyana’s men’s and women’s under-21 national teams competed at the Junior Pan American Hockey Championships in Barbados, and finished respectively finishing 5th and 6th in those competitions.
While it was a commendable feat on the part of the teams, Guyana Hockey Board (GHB) President Philip Fernandes has labelled Guyana’s performances on the international stage as an ‘overachievement’, considering the resources available to the sport.
The GHB has long been lamenting the lack of an artificial turf for outdoor hockey – a resource that can be a game changer for the sport – and Fernandes disclosed in a recent interview that there would be only so much the Guyanese hockey teams can do while training on grass surfaces.
“I think that Guyana has been overachieving in the international circuit. If you talk with people in international hockey, they all say the same thing: What Guyana has been able to achieve, what we’ve been able to produce, is greater than what we should be able to do at this stage,” the GHB President has declared.
He added, “Our results against nations, all of whom have artificial hockey pitches on which to train, on which to play, means that there’s no way Guyana should be winning matches internationally.”
Fernandes went on to highlight the dedication of Guyana’s hockey fraternity, citing it as the reason for their success. “Our success has been largely due to the passion that our players and coaches have locally, and the kind of time and effort we invest in the game,” he said.
“We train harder than the rest, that is what has kept us alive. But I can’t help but feel that it is coming to a stage where we can’t sustain it,” Fernandes bluntly said.
The explanation behind his reasoning stems from the constant evolution of teams from countries who have better resources. The GHB president explained, “Every time we go and compete and we have good results, the opposition then can go back to the drawing board, go back to their artificial surfaces, and train again, improve what it is that they’ve not done well. Meanwhile, the young people of Guyana come back to the flooded fields and the occasional gymnasiums that they use and try to make do and improvise with what substandard facilities we have.
“And this is a tremendous impediment! All the strides that you make leading up to tournaments basically end up being lost again because we’re not able to improve ourselves at the same rate as people who have adequate facilities to do so,” Fernandes explained.
At the recently concluded Pan Am Junior Games, Guyana’s men pulled off a stunning victory over Brazil in what was probably the highlight of that tournament for the junior national teams.