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Lady Jags lose to Soca Princesses 3-0, T&T qualifies for CAC Games as group winner
'Lady Jag' Kayla De Souza (centre) challenging for the ball against two Trinidad players.
Beaten but not disgraced is apt in summarizing the performance of the ‘Lady Jags’ who went down to Trinidad and Tobago’s Soca Princesses 3-0 in the final game of Group F in the Women’s Gold Cup Qualifying competition at the Marvin Lee Stadium, Macoya, last evening.
While the ‘Lady Jags’ lost, both teams have qualified for the final round of qualifying which will be held sometime in the future since the CFU has not made the dates known as yet.
Trinidad through, by virtue of winning the group has qualified for the CAC Games set for Puerto Rico in July/August this year.
In the penultimate game of the group, Barbados squeezed to an exciting 4-3 win over St. Lucia to take the third place in the group with the St. Lucians settling for the fourth place.
Netting the double for the Twin Island Republic was forward Kennya Cordner who beat the composed and confident Tenyka Francique in the 15th and 65th minute. Afiyah Matthias converted the other goal in the 34th minute.
Guyana found it a challenge to deal with the nippy nature of the Soca Princesses style of play as they attacked from the flanks. The Lady Jags enjoyed their moments of possession but found it very difficult to penetrate the T&T’s attacking third.
The first goal, many of the Guyanese supporters felt was offside and was scored at a time when the ‘Lady Jags’ were matching the host team in every department. Despite going one down, the Guyanese team kept focused but their fitness level and the rigors of International football at this level took its toll.
The much more experienced Soca Princesses capitalized on the inexperience of the ‘Lady Jags’ who sought to shut down T&T’s Sweden based Ahkeela Mollon on the right side. The Guyanese did that admirably, but were left exposed on the left side and that was where the T&T team worked on with success.
Goal number three saw the Guyanese goalkeeper, who won many fans in T&T for her composed play and confidence, made a valiant effort to cut down the space Cordner had after receiving the ball in the Guyana half from Mollon who was still in the T&T half.
The calm Cordner drew Francique to her right and fired her shot to the far post, Francique got a touch but it was not enough to stop the all from trickling over the line into goal.
Guyana’s performance was much more compact in the second half but still they could not find a way of testing the T&T goalkeeper, Kimika Forbes.
Technical Director Mark Rodrigues complemented his charges for their fight and resilience but noted that their level of fitness was below that of Trinidad.
Losing one of his main defensive players – Briana De Souza – to injury was a big blow to the team plan Rodrigues noted, De Souza had to be taken to hospital yesterday morning and was unable to take the field. Alyssa Budhoo started in her position.
“Losing De Souza was a big blow for us we had to make adjustments to the line up at the last moment. Whoever got the first goal would have gotten the edge and so it turned out that Trinidad got it. The positive out of this though is that it is not a loss that knocks us out of the tournament, it’s a loss at a good time because now it shows us where we are and where we need to be; not just the players but the coaching staff in terms of systems of play against teams like Trinidad and even bringing in new players.”
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