Busby wants age group leagues for local girls
Published:Monday | August 12, 2024 | 12:08 AMLivingston Scott/Gleaner Writer
The underwhelming performance of the Jamaica under-15 Reggae Girlz at the Concacaf Under-15 League A tournament, which concluded in Costa Rica yesterday, has put the spotlight on the development of local female footballers.
The young Reggae Girlz suffered an 11-0 drubbing by regional standard-bearers United States in their opening fixture and although they defeated Caribbean neighbours Haiti 2-1 in the second match they slumped to 4-0 defeats by Central American rivals Costa Rica and El Salvador.
Senior Reggae Girlz head coach Hubert Busby Jr admits there is a huge development gap for Jamaica’s youngest female talent.
He pointed out that there are no leagues or competitions which cater for the nation’s young female players who have to rely on the senior women’s league or the schoolgirl league to get experience and gain exposure.
He noted that at the school level the very young players have to compete with their senior peers for places in the team, but he believes it would be good to have the age group competitions, like Pepsi (under-14) and Colts (under-16) for boys, in order to give these girls the chance to really make progress at that level.
“It is something that I am looking to discuss with Mr (Wendell) Downswell (director of football) and the necessary parties, on how we can collectively improve that.
“It is completely different from the boys’ side where schoolboy football is almost all year round. Manning Cup and daCosta Cup preparations start in May and the competitions don’t start until September. So the passion is there and it is there for the females as well. But there is not much investment,” he said.
Busby also pointed out that the clubs are not doing much to support the female arm of their programmes either and so most young players have no established avenue to hone and develop their talent.
“The clubs are not looking to do much and that is something that needs to be looked at and addressed. I have some ideas on how we can do that, hopefully we can do something collectively.
“Collectively we can figure out how we can bring together some of the young talents that do want to play and just do not have an opportunity to play in a programme or a training centre. So those are the challenges and we have to talk about it in terms of resources because it is not cheap. But if we can do some things, as we have a great football centre (Captain Horace Burrell Centre of Excellence), and if we can bring the best young talent in the island together more often that would help,” Busby said.
He added that there also needs to be an inter-connection (between junior and senior teams) in terms of a playing model and all the other things away from football that support them.