Remembering Guyana’s historic Lady Jags

Dec 21, 2014 Sports

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By Santokie Nagulendran

A football team from Guyana has only qualified for a major International tournament once in the country’s history… and it wasn’t the Men’s team.
In 2010, Guyana’s National Women’s team, aptly named the ‘Lady Jags’, made history by qualifying for that year’s CONCACAF Gold Cup held in Mexico, a tournament featuring the best women’s sides in the region and also serving as qualification for the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
As with the Men’s National team, recent years have seen the progression of the Lady Jags halted, but it’s important to remember the history the Lady Jags created.
The route to 2010’s Gold Cup was not easy for the team; they initially earned wins over St. Vincent & the Grenadines (1-0), Suriname (2-0), St. Lucia (8-0) and Barbados (3-0,) but eventually finished second to Trinidad and Tobago in their Caribbean qualifying group, and thus had to face Cuba in a two-legged play off during June and July 2010 to determine who would qualify.
The first leg saw the Cubans earn a 1-0 win in Havana, but the Lady Jags stormed back during the second leg in Providence stadium, goals from Captain Ashley Rodrigues, Brittany Persaud and Justine Rodrigues ensuring a 3-1 victory and qualification for Guyana. After the game Ashley Rodrigues commended the team spirit in the camp, saying: “There are a lot of leaders out there and together we all helped to push each other. It is not just an individual, everyone steps up when they have to and that is what made us successful.”
Unfortunately the team failed to win a game at the 2010 CONCACAF Gold Cup held later that year in Mexico, at one point they were 2-2 with hosts and eventual runners-up Mexico, but ended up losing the game 7-2.
Nevertheless, the fact they even qualified for such a tournament was something for the nation to celebrate and applaud: they were only a few games away from becoming the first Caribbean side to qualify for a Women’s World Cup. Sadly, the Senior Lady Jags faded into obscurity after 2010 to such an extent that under the Christopher Matthias-led GFF, a Guyanese women’s team was not even entered for the inaugural Caribbean Women’s Cup held earlier this year. In 2011, the U-20s side took part in CFU qualifiers for the 2012 U-20 World Cup, however after a good start they failed to progress past the second round of qualifiers, yet the team showed promise of potential. However, as with the Men’s team, an opportunity to develop and build upon the success of both the Junior and Senior women’s team was ultimately lost due to the affairs of the administration running football, and in this case, the U-20 side was left in the footballing wilderness due to inactivity.
The majority of the successful 2010 Senior Lady Jags, formed and coached by technical director Mark Rodrigues, were foreign-based, and thus there were some critics who argued the need for more local-based females in the team.
Certainly, whilst there is currently no real avenue for senior females in Guyana to develop their football skills, the experience of playing in a National Team with overseas players who ply their trade for colleges or professionally abroad would be priceless for local-based players. In 2013, Guyana’s under-17 Women’s team, made up exclusively of local players, lost all three games in a CFU tournament and conceded 44 goals in the process, including a 19-0 loss to Haiti and this really outlined how far the Women’s game in Guyana needs to improve in order to compete with the best teams in the Caribbean.
Such results highlight the state of the Women’s game in Guyana at the moment, and the need to incorporate foreign-based players into the National set-up as a means of improving results and also benefiting the development of locally-based players. As with the Men’s team, the best way to form a National team is to blend local talent with foreign-based players.
Good news has recently arrived with the announcement this week by the Normalisation Committee that they have activated the Women’s Football Committee of the GFF, to be led by committee member Stuart May. There will be a focus on developing the women’s game at a grassroots level, and engaging communities where women’s football is not played much. Finally, the committee also announced that the Women’s under-23 team will be playing in 2016 Olympic qualifiers next year.
The future of Guyanese football looks bright at the moment, there seems to be definitive and concrete plans put in place by the Normalisation Committee to ensure the long-term development of the game for both Men and Women. For the Women’s team, the dream of becoming the first team from the Caribbean to qualify for a World Cup can begin again, hopefully with a team that contains Guyanese both born abroad and those who developed their footballing talent in Guyana. With the right infrastructure in place, Guyana’s Lady Jags can roar again.

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