AS GUYANA’S female football team, known to many as the Lady Jags get set for the final stage of the CFU World Cup Under-17 Qualifying stage from the 29th November to 3rd December 2010 in Kingston Jamaica, they are expected to face an uphill task physically and psychologically when they go up against Bahamas.
Similarly like the Golden Jaguars who used Trinidad and Tobago’s Jamal Shabazz as their Technical Director for their CONCACAF 2014 World Cup qualifying fixtures, Bahamas will be led by their Technical Director in Guyanese Paul James.
In an invited comment with Chronicle Sport yesterday, James, who is very happy that Guyana has qualified for this stage and has made it through to the second round, is looking forward to the game against his home country, which he wished well.
He noted that his team started their preparation in March of last year and has played three friendly encounters in the United States of America, mostly in Florida last month, while they played against the Cayman Islands and Coral Spring Under-20 girls where they lost both matches.
He went on to make mention of their win over Antigua and Barbuda and Bermuda in their respective group qualifiers, with the margin of victory being 10-0 and 2-0, while saying they had intensified their training to four days a week ahead of this final stage.
Stressing on preparation he added, ‘Here in the Bahamas, we have a very good youth structure with competitions for boys and girls from Under-7 through to Under-17, wherein, the youth league starts in November of the present year and culminates in April of the following year.
Our emphasis is on youth development and we have around 1,000 kids in the youth league. Soccer is not the number one sport in this country, as track and field, swimming, softball, baseball and basketball, are all ahead of soccer.”
What is left to be seen is if James will emulate Shabazz and take the Bahamas girls into the next round of the tournament.