GRENOBLE, France — Jamaica’s inaugural Women’s World Cup run ended on June 18 after a 4-1 defeat to Australia that was much closer than the final score indicated. Two of Sam Kerr’s four goals in the match — an Australian Women’s World Cup record — came from goalkeeping errors. The Reggae Girlz put Australia under considerable pressure in a 20-minute spell early in the second half, when Havana Solaun (now with Klepp of Norway after three seasons in the NWSL with Seattle and Washington) scored in the 49th minute. Jamaica also lost 3-0 to Brazil and 5-0 to Italy.
After the Australian game, Jamaica head coach Hue Menzies was very precise on where he wants the program to go next, and that includes continued Jamaican Football Federation (JFF) support as well as more community and business involvement to assist in the development of the local women’s league.
“We can’t stop saying how resilient this group is,” Menzies said. “A lot of things that we fixed during this World Cup, this needs to happen before the World Cup. “We need to go back to the federation and say, ‘We need to get these high quality games before we get here so that we can fix the sort of things that are fixable.’ We can’t be doing it during the World Cup.”
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