Describing their injury setbacks in the past fortnight as hard luck stories hardly does them any justice.

White was chosen in the Kookaburras squad for Brazil, only to rupture his posterior cruciate ligament evading a ball during training in Perth two weeks ago. 

Govers may well have been his replacement, but tore his hamstring for the sixth time in four months doing sprint work during a session with the Olympics team. The striker had just barely met Hockey Australia’s timeline to prove his fitness for selection, only to miss out on the initial squad anyway.

As a result, Govers is moving back to the Illawarra and plans to instead travel for elite camps in Western Australia when back to full fitness. 

While the prospect of having a ceramic hip replacement looms in the background after years of fighting a degenerative condition, Govers is determined to push on.

A cameo for Illawarra club team Albion Park is on the cards, before he returns to Holland for a third season. “I still wish it was all just a bad dream, but I’m starting to look ahead,” Govers said.

“It’s going to be hard while the Olympics is on, I did everything I could to be there.

“I’ll go and play in Holland and then at the Indian Premier League and then maybe look towards 2018 (Commonwealth Games on the gold Coast). Right now I’ve just got to start the rehab process all over again and see where it takes me.”

White and Govers met with NSW Institute of Sport officials in Sydney on Friday to finalise their program. As their respective Illawarra teams – Albion Park and White’s University, the two long-standing heavyweights of the competition – meet on Sunday, they will begin their journey to full fitness together, half-a-world away from where they’d rather be.

“I feel worse for T-Dubbs (White) than myself,” he said. 

“I’ve been pushing to be fit for a while, in the end it was too much for my body.

“But for him, he’s so unlucky, the way it happened.”

White has been trying to busy himself with house renovations, even if he’s restricted to avoid duties which risk hurting his knee further.

An overseas holiday beckons, a much-needed break after the emotional letdown of missing out on Rio.

“We booked flights for my fiance (Lauren) before we knew I would be going to be Brazil,” he said.

“So thankfully it was all refundable, even though we never expected it to pan out this way. “It sucks, that’s all I can really say about it. But there are other things on the horizon and there’s no point sitting around whinging for too long.”

It took days to confirm White's PCL strain would sideline him during the most important weeks on the calendar. “The medical staff were hopeful it would be OK, but I knew there was something wrong,” he said.

“I kept running for a bit at the time, but later it started getting pretty sore. Then the scans confirmed it.”

White said he’ll be the first person waiting to celebrate if the Kookaburras, the favourites to win in Rio, return with gold.

“I’ll be at the airport to welcome them, for sure,” he said. 

“It’s tough, but it’s a big squad and most of us have played together for a while, so I still want to be part of it as much as I can.”