TWO matches, two wins and a clean sheet is the story so far for ‘Lady Jags’ in the CONCACAF U-20 Women’s U-20 Championships Qualifiers.

Last Sunday Guyana dominated Antigua and Barbuda in every third of the pitch to secure a 2-0 win and moved to the top of the table (on goal difference) ahead of St Lucia, who also won their second game in as many matches, with a 2-1 upset over Bermuda.

Head coach Dr Ivan Joseph opted for an unchanged 11 from his previous win (2-0) against Bermuda; a move he said was necessary since the intention was to “give us more chemistry and cohesion”.

Having not seen Antigua and Barbuda play, Dr Joseph also reasoned that having an unchanged starting team was important, adding, “We didn’t know anything about what they did. We just wanted to do the things that we needed to do to become a better football team – to defend well, to be organised and to execute our attacking set plays.”

From the start, Lady Jags made it clear to the Antiguan ladies that it was going to be a long night. Tiandi Smith, Audrey Narine and Jenea Knight were thorns in the visitors’ feet upfront, while Kiana Khedoo was exceptional in distributing the ball from the midfield and captain Brianne Desa and her troops in the back held off any challenge they faced.

After a few missed chances, Guyana broke the deadlock in the 24th minute, when Smith, playing onto a ball from Khedoo, found herself one-on-one with an advancing Antiguan goalkeeper.

Smith was brought down and the referee immediately pointed to the penalty spot. However, the goalkeeper was injured and was replaced by Alexandria Jackson.
Desa, the team’s captain, stepped up and calmly converted, much to the delight of the vocal fans.

The half ended 1-0, but had Guyana scored at least half of their chances, they would have been up by at least four goals.

While the first half of the game had much to offer, the second half saw Guyana basically playing against themselves, as Antigua decided to sit back deep to avoid a lopsided defeat.
However, Khedoo’s impressive evening paid off in the 60th minute when she ran onto the ball just outside the ‘18’ and curled her shot to the top left of the goal. It was a beautiful strike, timed perfectly and hard. She celebrated as soon as it left her feet.

Up next for Lady Jags is a clash against St Lucia, on Friday, which could possibly determine the winners.

Both sides are undefeated and Johnson, talking to Chronicle Sport following his side’s impressive 2-0 win over Antigua, said, “We have three days’ rest, so we need to get them away from football … we have two days to prepare for St Lucia, who have been quite the scorers.

“They get a lot of goals in, they’re fast, and they’re strong, so our job is to heal our injuries, look at the St Lucia tape and decide what the game plan is.”