WESTERN BUREAU:
WHEN IT comes to Jamaica’s football, the Reggae Girlz are the ones with their hands on the steering. But while they’ve remained the most successful national football team for some time, head coach Lorne Donaldson said that they are constantly battling for recognition.
“We can do all the talking we want, the rest of the world knows, when you talk about football in Jamaica, you talk about the Girlz. So that’s what’s going on,” Donaldson said.
“A lot of these players, even now, there’s no credit given to them. They know,” he continued, stating their perception. “We got to the World Cup and people don’t understand how hard it is to do what they have done, and some of these players have been around for a while.”
The Jamaica senior women’s football team has qualified for back-to-back FIFA Women’s World Cup competition. Last Thursday, the Reggae Girlz won the first of two friendly internationals against Paraguay 1-0 by virtue of a goal scored by Alysson Swaby in injury time at the Montego Bay Sports Complex in Catherine Hall.
For that game, things never went according to plan, and Donaldson said this further highlights some issues with women’s football here.
“Anything that could’ve gone wrong with a team went wrong,” he said. “Every time we turned around, something was off. We didn’t train the night before the game, and on match day we had some bus issue. So anything that went wrong they (players) were like, ‘Why us?’ And I have to remind them, you guys are females and female football in Jamaica is not respected at the level that it should be.
“We want female footballers in Jamaica, and the people, to understand that we’re way behind the times when it comes to this kind of stuff,” added Donaldson.
The Jamaica coach has had a long career coaching females in the United States. In that country, there is far greater appreciation for women’s football and their national team is number one in the world and the most successful, having won four World Cup titles, four Olympic Games titles, and nine Concacaf championships.
A former national senior football and Cavalier Soccer Club representative, Donaldson said this bias is culture-driven, as he juxtaposed it against another sport that changed its perception with continued success.
“It’s no different from track and field, where until a little girl named Merlene Ottey showed up and then track and field for women was accepted,” he argued. “It wasn’t accepted; I was around at that time. I used to watch Ottey train at the stadium (national), and it’s the same thing. It takes a long time to break that stereotype and hopefully, we’re getting there; and I think it’s going to be an exciting World Cup.
Jamaica’s 2023 World Cup qualification was earned at the Concacaf Women’s Championship in Mexico last July, and as the hosts missed out on a World Cup spot, Donaldson, citing the difference in respect accorded the women’s game elsewhere, said the football-mad Central American country would give anything to be in Jamaica’s place.
“If I go to the Mexican Soccer Federation and say give us US$30 million and take our place … they would’ve said ‘Take the US$30 million’, and taken our place. We don’t know how valuable it means to those teams. When you go to Mexico and see what they have, and see how they (national women footballers) are treated like princesses,” he compared.
“As a country, we have something special, let’s enjoy it. We’ve got something special going on right here … this is not going to happen every time, but I think we’ve to come on board now and realise it’s happening, and accept it. Because we’re waiting for other stuff to happen for years and it’s not happening,” Donaldson pleaded. “Well, let us support the thing that is happening ‘nuh’. I’m waiting for more people to say, ‘You know what, this is true stuff, let’s come watch it.’”