Your turn Reggae Boyz! - Wilks

Sports Development Foundation (SDF) general manager Denzil Wilks has challenged Jamaica's men's senior football team to follow in their female counterparts' momentum and qualify for another FIFA World Cup.

Wilks was speaking at an official welcoming ceremony for the local-based delegation of the senior women's football team, which returned to the island yesterday at the Norman Manley International Airport after beating Panama on Wednesday night to qualify for the FIFA Women's World Cup in France next year.

"I throw out a challenge to the entire coaching staff and players: You will not wait so long to qualify for a second World Cup," Wilks said. "I am sure. We've been waiting. This now, I think, will spur the men on to say 'Listen, it's been way back in 1998,' some people won't even remember, some weren't born, but this is just a wonderful thing."

Support Paying Off

Wilks said that his agency has been backing women's football for a number of years, and he was happy to see that support paying off, however, he wants more investors to get behind the team because of how much the sport means to the Jamaican people.

"The Sports Development Foundation has been in the trenches for a long time," he said. "For those who don't know, football, in spite of the criticisms, is in our blood. It's our most popular sport without any doubt. It can't just be men's football (that gets attention) because the women have now done what the men did in 1998. We spend quite a bit of money on football and sometimes we take flack for it because people are saying 'Nutten naa gwaan,' but what more can we say?"

Wilks also presented the Jamaica Football Federation with a cheque for $5 million at yesterday's event.