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Successful hosting of Caribbean women’s qualifier Group E tainted by power outage – Lady Jags fail to get past first round for the first time in nine years
Guyana’s female Footballer of the year Tiandi Smith (19) and Sydney Cummings (4) battle Bajan Deshae Darrell (9) for the ball in a nil all draw. (Sean Devers photo)
Following last year’s successful hosting of the CONCACAF under-17 girls World Cup qualifiers group D, the ruling regional football body had no regrets in granting the Guyana Football Federation (GFF) another opportunity to host another group of qualifiers in 2018, this time, the just concluded Caribbean women’s qualifier group E.
The qualifiers which featured Guyana’s senior women’s team, the ‘Lady Jags’, were held at the National Track and Field Facility (NTFC) on the West Coast of Demerara from May 23rd to 27th and they were smoothly hosted by the GFF with the exception of an unfortunate generator failure which resulted in the floodlights shutting down before the final and decisive match on Sunday the 27th which the local side had to win against Barbados.
The power outage occurred just a few moments before Guyana’s national anthem concluded and it is baffling to comprehend how in an international match such an embarrassing thing happened. A disappointing day for the management of the NTFC which hosted the National Schools’ Track and Field Championships, South America Junior Championships (both for the first time) along with under-17 girls; World Cup qualifiers; all hiccup free last year.
After being delayed by almost an hour, both sides had to hastily get warm for kickoff which was blown shortly after the power issue was fixed. In the end the game was drawn 0-0 which resulted in the Jags finishing second in the group and not advancing from the first round of qualifiers for the first time since 2009.
It is also mind-boggling when trying to figure out why the Lady Jaguars, who looked the best team in the qualifiers, played the way they did in the final match. Was it the haste in getting ready after the final match or was it the pressure of knowing that they had to win the final game to advance?
Insanity has been described as doing something the same way repeatedly and expecting a different result; and the Guyanese who played a formation with three at the back, from the initial stages to the end of the match had bombarded Barbados with seemingly mindless, long, air-through balls which were safely negotiated by the Bajans.
Barbados, unable to qualify with only three points from two games, entered the final match of the qualifiers as the team with the second weakest defence after conceding three goals from their two previous games, while the Jags attack were the most potent, after netting a total of eight times but they were unable to find the back of the net after deviating from building up plays to the long-ball tactic.
“To me the biggest disappointment, the biggest reason for the loss was our inability to dot the ‘I’ and cross the ‘T’ in the final third. Sometimes the stage is big, and the lights are bright, and you don’t get to deliver your biggest performance in those types of moments. I don’t think we played our best game, and that’s the biggest disappointment, but I think we need these experiences in order to be able to move forward,” head coach of the Lady Jags, Dr. Ivan Joseph explained to the media, following the draw against Barbados.
Guyana finished the group second with five points, while Bermuda topped with seven points to advance to the next round of qualification where they will be pitted with Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Cuba, which will run from August 25th to September 2nd.
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