Canadian player sells shirts to play with pride

NEW DELHI: Ken Pereira would’ve been presented a shirt with pomp and splendour had he stuck to ice hockey. But the veteran Canadian playmaker with 302 caps ends up selling shirts. Reason? Making money to fund his trip to the Hero Honda FIH World Cup in New Delhi.

“Field hockey is not very big in Canada,” Pereira, who made his debut in 1995, said. “So, we’ve got to dig deep into our pockets to make our trips abroad possible especially since weve no great rivalry in North America and have to travel to Europe or Asia.”

Pereira, whose parents hail from Goa, sold shirts like the rest of the team. They were the Canadian colours, red and with the Maple Leaf imprinted costing $30 each as they planned for the New Delhi campaign.

“I was on the lower end of the scale,” he said. “I don’t know too many people in Vancouver (on the west coast) where field hockey is centred as I live in Toronto,” he said. “Guess I sold about 30 shirts.” It could all have been different had Pereira, 36, stuck to ice hockey, the big sport in Canada. “I played ice hockey till I was 17,” he said.

Canada qualified for the World Cup by beating the US in the final of the Pan American championship in Santiago, Chile, once again making sacrifices of the monetary kind.

“Life is tough for a Canadian field hockey player. I have to be away in Vancouver and I can count the number of days I spend at home in Toronto especially since I also play for HGC in the Dutch league,” he said. And it’s tough having a girlfriend he said even finding one. “Now that I have one, it’s mainly just emails, text messages and telephone calls,” he said in a lighter vein.