J’Elsisha Alexander fired in a beaver trick to lead the T&T Under-20 Women’s footballers to a comfortable 7-0 drubbing of Dominica in their second match in Group ‘E’ of the CONCACAF Under-20 Women’s Championships Qualifiers at the Ato Boldon Stadium in Balmain, Couva on Sunday night.
However, with only the top team in the group advancing to the CONCACAF Championships, the win has put them on course for a clash with regional powerhouse Canada tonight at the same venue from 7 pm. After the game, both Alexander and coach Dernelle Mascall spoke about the difficulty of facing the Canadians.
Alexander, who almost singlehandedly gave the Soca Princesses their second win Sunday, said they will have to go back to the training pitch, while Mascall called on the fans to come out and support her charges with such a big task ahead.
The Soca Princesses were hard-pressed even before the start of the match when the Canadians, following a 22-0 drubbing of the Dominicans last Friday, continued their menacing mood with a 9-0 hammering of Bermuda in the game that preceded the T&T/Dominica encounter, which took them to six points at the top of the group on goal difference.
The effect of that result was anything but negative, though, as Hackeemar Goodridge handed the home team the advantage when she dashed into the Dominican penalty area to turn in a loose ball in the 12th minute for the 1-0 lead.
Five minutes later, the local fans were left cheering a second time. This time midfielder Gabriel Ramdeen hustled a pass to the prolific Orielle Martin, who had been unmarked upfront. And when she got the ball, she let it fly hard and low, which the Dominican custodian Galisha Lockhart saw slip through her grasp in the 17th minute and into the goal, giving the T&T team a 2-0 lead.
The night, though, had belonged to Alexander, leaving her name on the lips of many at the end of the 90 minutes. In the 23rd minute, she was set on a one-on-one with Lockhart, and she made it count by going past the custodian on the left side before hitting the ball into the empty net for a 3-0 lead.
Mascall’s charges faced little to no resistance from their counterparts, and they delighted themselves in attacks that broke the Dominican defence at regular intervals. In the 30th minute, the T&T girls received their fourth item of the match. Alexander, facing two defenders on the left of the penalty area cut inside of the first and struck a right footer powerfully past the goalkeeper for her second goal of the night before the other defender could have offered a tackle.
At the halftime interval, the home team was comfortably ahead 4-0, and when the game resumed, Alexander added two more to her tally in the 65th and 71st minutes to hand her team a 6-0 advantage. Still, the T&T team was not done.
Madison Campbell added the exclamation mark on the proceedings with the game two minutes into added-on time. Though seemingly hidden among the crowd, Campbell lifted herself to head home from a left-side corner to send the T&T team on six points, the same as the Canadians, with tonight’s encounter to decide the team that will go through.
The Canadians who have a superior goal difference can advance with a tie, but Mascall’s charges must win to be the top team to advance.
Mascall told the media after the match, “I’m more proud of the girls and their performance tonight. They stuck to the game plan, and we got the result we went for, but we have a big task ahead of us, so we have to make sure we have some fresh legs going into that game.”
“We’ll be up against the giants of CONCACAF, so to say tonight’s game was a dress rehearsal, I would not say that. It remains the same; we take one game at a time, and now the task at hand is Canada. We want to be dynamic, as we said before; athleticism is always a good thing, and then we have some very tactical players, so the 12th man would be very important for Canada,” Mascall said.
