JFF moves to make outstanding payments to Girlz

The Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) says it expects to settle all outstanding payments owed to disgruntled members of the senior national women’s team by today.

JFF general secretary Dennis Chung made the disclosure yesterday hours before members of a second-string Jamaican team returned to the island following a 2-1 defeat to hosts Panama in their opening match of the Concacaf Women’s Gold Cup qualifiers on Wednesday.

Captain Kadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw and other members of the team that created history by qualifying for the knock-out stage of this year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup, withdrew themselves from consideration for the Gold Cup qualifiers over differences with the JFF.

Among the issues, they said, was non-payment for their performances at the World Cup and “the numerous outstanding bonuses for qualifying in the summer of 22”, they said in a statement posted on social media.

The standoff has gained international attention amid perceived inequalities between female athletes and their male counterparts.

“We are trying to pay off everything that we owe them by tomorrow [today],” Chung said during an interview with The Gleaner yesterday.

“We are trying to get the portion that is due to them advanced to us [by the world football governing body FIFA],” he explained.

The JFF general secretary refused to divulge the total pay-out that will be made to the Reggae Girlz but said that they should also get financial statements detailing all payments made.

“I don’t know if there will be any minor discrepancies ‘cause we have gone through it and worked out everything,” Chung said.

He said once the payments are made, the JFF “would have satisfied” the three issues raised by the first-string members of the national team in a letter and suggested that the ball would then be in their court to have those issues resolved.

“So we have nothing else on record although we hearing people say there has been ‘mistreatment’. We want to know what that mistreatment is, and so we would like to have something specific written to us as per the grievance procedure and then we can deal with that,” he said.

“Once that is done, then we just go through the process and try and get a resolution. There is nothing else for us to do.”

Chinyelu Asher, Jamaica’s stand-in captain for the contest against Panama, and other members of the Jamaican contingent, declined to comment on the impasse as they exited the Norman Manley International Airport yesterday.

Asher and goal-scorer Ricshaya Walker heaped praises on their teammates and the coaching staff for the creditable display against the Panamanians.

Jamaica surprised their hosts with Walker’s 22nd-minute goal but were denied a point through an own goal by Alika Keene and a late strike by Lineth Cedeno.

“Bittersweet with the result. I’m so proud of these young girls. They showed up, and for a lot of them, it was their debut on a huge stage,” Asher said.

“We didn’t come away with the win, but I think we won a lot of hearts and inspired a lot of confidence in this young squad.”

Walker was elated to score her first international goal on debut. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t pull it out, but it still felt good,” she said.

Interim head coach Xavier Gilbert acknowledged that “we had our challenges putting together a team” but said he saw more positives than negatives with his inexperienced squad.

“The ladies acquitted themselves in the short time that we had to put the team together. We had to be creative to get them organised how we wanted them to be on the set pieces, and so on,” said Gilbert.

He said that not many tactical changes will be required to get the team to give a better performance against Guatemala in their next game on Sunday.

“A lot of it is going to be mental,” he said.