From London to Leonora: Otesha Charles looks to make mark with Lady Jags!

Aug 09, 2015 Sports

UK-based striker Otesha Charles will feature for Guyana’s Lady Jags in 2016 Olympic Qualifiers this month.

By Santokie Nagulendran

After a near five-year hiatus from International football, Guyana’s Senior Women’s team, known as the Lady Jags, resumed training last month in Georgetown, focusing on preparation for 2016 Olympic Qualifiers in Dominican Republic, which begin for the team on August 21st. The team, coached by Mark Rodrigues, contains a nucleus of players who featured in Guyana’s historic qualification for the 2010 Gold Cup, the first and only time a team from Guyana has qualified for a FIFA tournament.
With the majority of the squad being based in North America, one player travelling to Guyana to take part found herself in a unique geographical position: 21-year old Otesha Charles was the sole player flying from the UK to feature for the Lady Jags, having played for Guyana previously in for the Under-20 team in 2011.
Born in Guyana, Otesha Charles moved to England aged 6, and currently plays as a striker for London club Millwall FC, yet still remains connected to her home country of Guyana, “Playing for the Lady Jags has allowed me to return home and see family,’’ says Charles, who initially made her Guyanese debut in 2011 playing for the National Women’s Under-20 side, helping them reach the second round of 2012 CONCACAF U-20 Championship qualifiers by scoring an impressive four goals against Antigua and forming a very formidable striker partnership with team-mate Ashlee Savonna, who also trained with the senior squad last month.
Guyana’s National Women’s programme has been the victim of failures within administration over the past few years, with both the Under-20 and Senior team failing to play a single game in recent years, and thus tragically failing to capitalise on the success of the Lady Jags qualification for the 2010 Gold Cup. Under the Christopher Matthias-led GFF, Guyana failed to even enter a team last year for the inaugural Women’s Caribbean Cup, and thereby missed out on a major opportunity to develop as a team on the International stage once again. Charles had no contact with Lady Jags Head Coach Mark Rodrigues during this period of inactivity, but says it ended up being “a lovely surprise to get the call up!’’. Normalisation Committee Chairman Clinton Urling recently revealed that the Head Coach and the players are all taking part in the Women’s programme for no fee; an admirable gesture from all involved which embodies their commitment to the Guyana National Team.
The team got together in July to prepare for the 2016 Olympic Qualifiers, and played two practice matches against male youth teams in the process at Leonora’s new track and football facility. “The girls are amazing; everyone is really friendly and supportive. We all get along although I have the only English accent, so a lot of jokes are passed. It is fun, we have been working on a system that’s been really successful and evident in both games, more so in the last game (a match against recently crowned Digicel School champions Christianburg Wismar Secondary). We only had a week and the coaches did a fantastic job in preparing us for the qualifiers!’’ Charles said when reflecting on the intense week of training the squad under-went.
Despite not having had much time to play and gel together as a team, Charles remains confident in the ability of the 2015 Lady Jags and not long after attending the training camp, she received the good news that she had been selected as part of the final squad to fly to Dominican Republic in two weeks and represent Guyana as they take on St Kitts & Nevis, and Cuba in qualifiers: “It’s now down to us to go away and do our individual bits to tie up any loose ends! I believe we can make it to the Olympics!’’.