THE Guyana senior National women’s football team – the Lady Jags – will play their final match today, from 17:00hrs at the Leonora Track & Field and Football Facility against three-time defending champions of the Digicel schools football tournament; Christianburg Wismar Secondary School (Multi). The team, under head coach Mark Rodrigues, are winding down their week-long camp in preparation for next month’s Caribbean Football Union (CFU) Olympic Qualifiers in The Dominican Republic.
In the absence of an international friendly, as was proposed and announced by Rodrigues, the Lady Jags head coach resorted to first facing a Georgetown U-17 Boys team in a scrimmage at the same venue last Wednesday. He then wanted tougher opposition and believed that the nation’s top schools football team would suffice.
Coach of the ‘Multi’ team, Anthony Stephens, said that he is happy for the opportunity to face the National female team, adding that the game will give his troops the perfect opportunity to put what was being taught in practice sessions into reality.
The defending champions, and the most successful school at the country’s most prestigious tournament, will be playing Annandale Secondary on Sunday at home in Linden and Stephens said that his players understand what’s at stake and as such, will be taking today’s game seriously.
Stephens said that he warned his players about being lackadaisical against the ‘Lady Jags’, since the team didn’t get the title of being Guyana’s most successful football team at all levels through luck.
The Lady Jags, he said, are a physical bunch and should his players think that they are playing the ‘regular girls’ a rude awakening is on the horizon.