Guyana’s Lady Jags record historic 2-0 win over Suriname
… to play St Vincent tomorrow
GUYANA’S `Lady Jaguars’ recorded a historic 2-0 win against Suriname when the two teams met in a Group `A’ fixture of the Caribbean Football Union’s (CFU) Women’s World Cup Qualifier at the GCC ground, yesterday.
Playing in front of a partisan crowd, Brittany Persaud opened the scoring with a perfect header in the 19th minute to give the Guyanese a 1-0 lead which was maintained up to the interval.
Two minutes into the second session Alison Heydom made it 2-0 and the home team’s custodian Ronette Cort was hardly called upon to work overtime thereafter.
From the start of the game, the Guyanese were all over their Dutch opponents, but despite this, they were not putting together enough passes.
This allowed the Surinamese to make a few counterattacks in Guyana’s defence and on one such occasion, they came very close to scoring.
The ball was played from the middle to Jolanda Saling just outside Guyana’s 18-yard box, but Saling failed miserably with a right foot shot that floated to Cort who did not save cleanly.
The Guyanese started to concentrate their attacks and counterattacks down the opposition’s left wing with Heydom creating most of the plays.
The attack was suddenly switched to the right flank and Guyana were awarded a throw in that was taken by the energetic and skilful Nikkita Persaud who threw the ball towards Suriname’s 18-yard box.
It landed inside the box and bounced to goal where Brittany Persaud was lurking with a defender on her back. Brittany Persaud went into the air and headed it clinically into the goal at second post, leaving the defender and the opposition’s custodian Nathalie Benjamin standing and wondering what had just happened.
With the crowd of approximately 500 persons urging them on, the local lasses came very close to scoring a second time, as team captain Ashley Rodrigues dribbled the ball down the left wing and squared it across Suriname’s goal mouth to Brittany Persaud who failed to get it cleanly and Benjamin grabbed it off her (Persaud) foot.
The visitors immediately employed a high defence game, but the Guyanese flew the trap and it was Rodrigues again who went down the left wing once again. This time she crossed the ball to second post where Nikkita Persaud was waiting, but Persaud’s header was saved by Benjamin.
With one minute remaining for the end of the first session, Suriname replaced Brigitte Rightens with Sigmana Deel in the front line.
Leading 1-0 going into the second period, the locals made their intention known even before the start as they employed a 4x1x5 system which appeared very strange but which paid dividends, as in the second minute into the session, they countered after Benjamin had cleared the ball from goal and the `Lady Jags’ won possession on the left side of the field.
The ball was then played to the right side drawing the opposition away from their goal area and immediately it was played back to the left side where Heydom ran past her marker, latched on to the ball, caught Benjamin advancing and simply lobbed it over her head into an open goal.
This inspired the local lasses even more, as they stepped up the pressure, while in the process, utilising their three changes, but they could not find their target again, despite coming very close to doing so.
For the entire match, the Dutch side took four direct shots to Guyana’s goal and forced three corners, while the home side had nine shots at their opponents’ goal and forced five corners.
The Guyanese will next meet St Vincent and the Grenadines tomorrow from 15:30 h at the same venue.
Prior to the start of the match, the two teams were met by His Excellency President Bharrat Jagdeo, Guyana Football Federation’s president Colin Klass who also served as the Match Commissioner and GT&T Marketing representative Abina Fung.
President Jagdeo witnessed the entire match and offered his congratulations to the history-making team after the game.