T&T’s senior women’s footballers went down to a heavy 4-1 defeat to Jamaica when they clashed in a lone international friendly match on Tuesday at the Ato Boldon Stadium in Balmain, Couva.
Coaches Damian Briggs and Densill Theobold got the opportunity to see the team in a competitive match for the first time since they began preparation for the World Cup Qualifiers about a month ago. Briggs said he was pleased with what he saw, considering the energy levels at the start, but urged the players not to allow the game and the outcome to define them.
Briggs initially held the position of assistant coach but was quickly ushered into the co-head coaching role alongside Theobald, following the resignation of Angus Eve last week. And he told the media his charges executed on their game plan, only that they trailed for the entire match.
The two-time World Cup campaigners showed their quality from as early as the fourth minute, when Olufolasade Adamolekun threaded a ball to Jodi Brown, who was given miles of space as she hovered around the T&T goal area, never to be challenged until she struck a thumping shot that sailed past Nicolette Craig in the T&T goal for a 1-0 lead.
Captain Kennya Cordner, the country’s leading goalscorer, was expectedly bogged down by the Jamaican defence; however, the little-known Nikita Gosine sprung an unexpected surprise when she picked up a loose ball at the top of the goal area. Feinting a shot on her right foot, Gosine quickly switched to her left foot and curled the ball nicely into the top right-hand corner of goalkeeper Sydney Schneider’s goal in the 13th minute.
The goal breathed a sigh of relief into the T&T camp as the teams left the field for the halftime interval, only for the Jamaicans to return as a rejuvenated bunch that quickly restored the advantage.
Tiffany Cameron was released down the right flank, and she centred for Kayla McKenna, but the latter could not connect with the ball, which eventually rolled invitingly for Natasha Thomas to blast in the goal in the 52nd minute.
With the score at 2-1, the Jamaicans intensified the pressure in search of a third goal to sink their counterparts at home. But they received some much-needed help when Nicolette Craig went for a well-floated right-side corner and missed in the 67th minute. And with Craig out of the way, Tiana Harris headed in the loose ball to hand the Jamaicans a 3-1 advantage and much-needed practice in goal scoring.
Already assured of two appearances at the World Cup, the Jamaican’s preparation for a third went into overdrive against T&T. Kalyssa Van Zanten dribbled inside the T&T goal area from right to left, only to see her left-footed shot blocked by Victoria Swift in the 87th minute. But Swift could do nothing when Brown quickly pounced on the loose ball to seal the victory 4-1.
Briggs told the media afterwards, “It was a pleasure to see the players. We worked to the game plan that we have and adjusted when we needed to adjust. I always say to them, ‘Don’t let this result define who we are. We know who we are; we know that we’re in a rebuilding phase, so we’ve got to take the good bits out of here and then take the bits that were not too good as well and work on them and go again.”
“The massive difference for us and their players is that their players are playing in season, whereas we only had three players that played in season, but they’re from abroad, and all the rest of the players are local, so we knew it was going to be a challenge from a physical point of view, but that’s why we wanted to pick our moments when we had high energy and have a go at them. And I thought, when we did, we were quite good. And there were moments when we had to drop off and deal with things, and we dealt with it, but for me, the performance was one that was encouraging, and so we just have to reset and go again.”
T&T has been drawn in Group F of the Qualifiers, which will be hosted here in T&T and will also feature El Salvador, Honduras, and Barbados. The qualifiers will begin next month and continue during the FIFA windows of February and April 2026.
