After battling with France for over 90 minutes, Jamaica finally had their reward.
The team known as the Reggae Girlz were battered and bruised, yet they held on for a goalless draw against one of the pre-tournament favourites in Sydney on Sunday and earned their country’s first point at a Women’s World Cup. Even their star striker Khadija Shaw’s late red card could not ruin the moment.
Jamaica finished bottom of the group in their only other World Cup, scoring just one goal and conceding 12 times in losing all three matches four years ago, including 5-0 against Italy, though that still could not take away from them becoming the first Caribbean side to qualify for the sport’s biggest tournament.
Their funding has been slashed by the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) on multiple occasions, yet a squad spearheaded by Shaw have rallied together to overcome those hurdles and create history. It is easy to understand why head coach Lorne Donaldson called a team ranked 51st by FIFA drawing with France, who are third, “the number one result we’ve had — men or women”.
The jubilant scenes on the pitch at full-time and in the changing room afterwards do not accurately convey what is happening behind the scenes, though.
Goalkeeper Rebecca Spencer alluded to their troubles.
“The gap is bridging,” Spencer said. “The poorer countries are getting better. For us, we’re a third-world country and we have to do quite a lot too. We’ve missed so many FIFA (international fixture) windows. It just takes a lot for the experienced players just to drag everyone through and just give the belief.”
On June 15, a month before the tournament started, the Jamaica squad released a statement that highlighted issues around “transportation, accommodations, training conditions, compensation, communication, nutrition and accessibility to proper resources”.
The JFF replied saying, “We acknowledge that things have not been done perfectly, and we are working assiduously to resolve them.”
That performance against France is a sign the team have made progress since the previous World Cup, yet the fear is they are being held back from reaching their full potential.
The Athletic can reveal the full extent of the issues the JWNT (Jamaica Women’s National Team) claim they have faced over the past few years, including:
- Two separate fundraising campaigns set up to help cover costs at this World Cup
- Players and coaches paying to get their own luggage on flights
- Players and staff not being reimbursed for expenses
- Adidas and Bob Marley’s family covered costs of a pre-World Cup camp, not the JFF
- The JFF being accused of “lacking professionalism”
The JWNT did not even exist a decade ago. They played their first match in 1991 but the programme was cut in 2010 due to a lack of funding so they did not take part in qualifying for the 2011 World Cup or the Olympics a year later. They remained dormant until 2014, when Cedella and Rita Marley, the daughter and widow of Jamaican reggae royalty Bob Marley, intervened.
Cedella runs the Bob Marley Foundation and is the chief executive of her late father’s record label Tuff Gong. She became an official ambassador for the JWNT and donated her own money to try to help them reach the 2015 World Cup finals in Canada. The entrepreneur reached out to Hue Menzies, a former professional footballer in the U.S. who had worked as an investment banker for Merrill Lynch, to manage the side.
Jamaica failed to qualify for Canada 2015, then missed out on the following year’s Olympics too. The JFF withdrew its support again. The JFF was given the opportunity to comment on this article prior to publication but declined to do so in detail, though a spokesperson did say: “Much of what you have written is not accurate but I think this is the time for us to focus on the performance at the World Cup and focus on the positives.”
The JWNT regrouped in 2018 and, somehow, within a few months, achieved the unthinkable.
The CONCACAF Women’s Championship is a tournament which takes place every four years, similar to the European Championship and Copa America, but doubles up as the North & Central American and Caribbean region’s World Cup qualifiers. Jamaica finished second in their group before losing 6-0 to the United States in the semi-finals. They faced Panama in the third-place play-off but the real prize for the winner of that match was qualification for the 2019 World Cup. Jamaica triumphed 4-2 on penalties, following a 2-2 draw, to seal their place in France.
If you look closely at photos from that game, you will notice the coats the players are wearing on the touchline do not have any official branding on them. The match took place in the U.S. state of Texas, in bad weather conditions in October, and the JFF had failed to provide the squad with adequate gear. Donaldson, now the head coach but an assistant at the time, went to a nearby branch of the Costco retail chain and bought them all rainproof jackets with his own money.
In the build-up to that World Cup the following summer, the JWNT met up for a training camp in Florida, then travelled to Scotland for a pre-tournament friendly in Glasgow. However, the squad took an unorthodox route from the U.S. to Europe because the JFF had not booked the flights in time.
Half of the squad flew first to Morocco in north Africa, then on to London, and from there went to Scotland. Due to the last-minute nature of the trip, some members of the coaching staff and players had to pay the charges for their own luggage to be carried on the planes.
Marlo Sweatman was a member of that squad but has missed out on selection this summer. Sweatman says the lack of organisation around matches and travelling is still a big issue.
“The camps are inconsistent and that comes down to finances,” the 28-year-old midfielder tells The Athletic. “When we have no big tournaments coming up, training sessions and friendlies get cancelled. Even in the lead-up to a World Cup or other big tournaments, there are always a bunch of little problems which come in. It just seems sometimes it’s not run very smoothly.
“We are not flying first class or in the business section too, we will be in economy — and that causes us to cramp up.”
Speaking to the Coaches Voice in June 2019, Menzies said: “It’s about building a sustainable programme and a league in Jamaica. We don’t want to go to one World Cup and then have everything just stop. We want to have a programme that means we’ll be at the next one, too.”
These problems are not unique to the JWNT either.
The Jamaican men’s side impressed by reaching the semi-finals of the CONCACAF Gold Cup — the region’s biannual championship — this month, led by a core group of British-born players, including Demarai Gray and Michail Antonio. However, last summer, they clashed with the JFF and sent them a letter after being left stranded in Suriname, 2,000 miles (3,000km) away, following a 1-1 draw in the CONCACAF Nations League group stage.
“We all signed a contract that the JFF has breached multiple times,” the Reggae Boyz wrote collectively. “Some of the things included in the contract is proper hotel accommodations and travel arrangements. Yet we still arrived to Suriname (to sleep) on sofa beds.
“We the players are saying enough is enough. We are calling for the general secretary, Dalton Wint, to resign. The players will no longer represent the country until he does.” Their pressure told. Wint stepped down a few days later to be replaced by Dennis Chung.
The Reggae Girlz might have gone on to finish bottom of their group at France 2019 but Havana Solaun’s goal in the third game, a 4-1 defeat to Australia, which meant the score was 2-1 for much of the second half, was an exciting sign for the future to sign off on.
It should have been a launchpad for them, and a landmark moment for women’s football in the whole Caribbean region.
But the first real sign the JFF would fail to capitalise on the momentum of that World Cup arrived a couple of months later when the players began a campaign called ‘No Pay No Play’. The squad and staff members had agreed contracts with the JFF to cover their costs before and during the tournament in France but there were delays in receiving the money. The dispute eventually saw Menzies step down that December.
He was approached for this article but declined to be involved.
A player who has represented Jamaica in recent years who has requested to stay anonymous says it has “been a battle since the beginning of time” over unfulfilled promises.
“The leaders of the federation have been in those seats of power (for a long time), so it’s no surprise that we are cycling through the same issues,” the player says. “We haven’t been getting money for things that we agreed with our federation in our contracts. Money hasn’t been paid on time and people have outstanding balances.
“When you’re a product of this environment and culture that lacks a lot of professionalism, you are desensitised to what you deserve. This is the treatment we have been used to.”
Michael Ricketts — no, not the former Bolton Wanderers and England striker — has been JFF president since 2017. He was previously its vice-president and took over from Captain Horace Burell, who passed away while in office.
Burrell was a prominent figure in Jamaica’s military, became JFF president in 1994 and held the position for almost 20 years across two spells. He was banned by FIFA from taking part in any football-related activity for six months in October 2011, with three months suspended, for violating its ethics code. Burrell called the punishment “harsh and painful” but did not appeal against it, “considering the relative levity of the sanction and the cause for which it was handed down”.
The JWNT had to rely on donations to help them reach that World Cup and history has repeated itself four years later.
Sandra Brower, midfielder Solaun’s mother, had raised nearly $50,000 (£38,000) to cover the team’s expenses at the time of publication. Brower says on the fundraising page that “every penny will go towards the Reggae Girlz” to allow “players and staff to focus on the competition” and promises receipts will be posted to show how the money was spent.
The Reggae Girlz Foundation (RGF), a separate campaign, had raised $42,108 (£32,700) by the beginning of this month. When contacted by The Athletic, the RGF said $5,000 (£3,800) was given to fund meals at the team’s January camp in Florida while the rest of the money was used for their pre-World Cup get-together in the Netherlands.
“You are grateful for people who are stepping up and doing that, but it’s just embarrassing,” the player, whose anonymity we are protecting, says. “We have players from Manchester City, Tottenham, the NWSL, and are still having to ask for help.
“We are sponsored by Adidas. Arsenal have a Jamaica-themed kit. We are supposed to be levelled up, but everything else has grown except for our situation.”
Olivia Grange, Jamaica’s minister for sport, announced in April that the government would provide the squad with $20million (Jamaican dollars, £98,000) worth of support. The money, which was handed out in the build-up to the World Cup, took the form of monthly stipends for each player to cover nutrition and training-related expenses.
Cedella Marley, who has been described as the side’s “fairy godmother,” was a major contributor towards that camp in Amsterdam through The Bob and Rita Marley Foundation. The funds raised through the foundation are all via private partnerships. The squad were based at Adidas’s headquarters in the Dutch city for 10 days and had use of the facilities, accommodation, transportation and activities.
The contributions from the two fundraising campaigns and Marley, along with support from Adidas and the Jamaican government, raise questions and concerns about the extent of the JFF’s backing of the team this summer.
“It’s the experience of a lifetime,” says Sweatman, who played in two of those games at France 2019. “You want to enjoy it, put in the hard work and feel the reward come back. When you have this in the back of your head it adds a lot of pressure and stress that shouldn’t be put on players.
“One of our team-mates set up a system where we could make T-shirts and sell them to our families to fundraise — you shouldn’t have to do that. You’re playing the top countries in the world. You look at other teams and say, ‘Wow, they have had camps every single month’. We step onto the field with a lack of preparation and that hits your confidence.
“(For the current squad) it takes part of the excitement away, because they’re expecting there will be roadblocks when they go into camp.”
Since Menzies stepped down, there have been three head coaches in under four years.
Hubert Busby Junior replaced Menzies — yet after nearly two years in charge, he was indefinitely suspended by the JFF in November 2021 when allegations emerged he had attempted to solicit sex from a player during his time as the head coach of Vancouver Whitecaps’ women’s team. He denied the allegations to The Guardian in 2021.
The Canadian club became aware of allegations of inappropriate behaviour by Busby in 2011 but the results of an investigation at the time were “inconclusive”. They chose not to renew his contract, and he told The Guardian it was due to a decision to go in a different “direction”.
Last August, Major League Soccer released the findings of an independent investigation into Vancouver’s handling of the abuse claims. It concluded the club’s handling of the misconduct allegations against Busby and Bob Birarda, another former head coach, were “appropriate”. The independent review did not investigate whether the allegations against Birarda and Busby were true. Busby did not respond when contacted by The Athletic.
Vin Blaine, former technical director of fellow Caribbean nation Grenada’s FA, then took over but his reign unravelled quickly. Within five months, the JWNT had sent a letter to the federation demanding he be sacked due to concerns over the lack of analysis and detailed game plans for their matches. The JFF stood by Blaine, yet he resigned in May last year and Donaldson stepped in. Blaine told the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper that he left “in the best interest of the team going forward”.
“The staff plays a big role in the players getting consistency,” Sweatman says. “It is hard to get a flow with the players because every camp is different, with people coming in and out. That’s OK when it’s three or four people, but not when you have a whole new coaching staff and half the team is new. We have a lot of big names too, and if a coach comes in who’s not at that level it’s frustrating.”
When the squad expressed their concerns publicly in June, Jonas Baer-Hoffmann, general secretary of FIFPro, the global footballers’ union, responded that Jamaica are “being held back by the infrastructure not being provided to them”.
“We’ve been in touch with the Reggae Girlz before in previous difficult situations and have assisted them in dealing with the challenges presented to them,” Hoffmann said. “It’s deeply frustrating (the new complaints).
“The federation doesn’t seem to care about them. They’re a very inspiring group, despite facing this again and again, they’ve been very vocal.”
The Jamaica squad has evolved since that World Cup four years ago.
Tottenham’s Drew Spence, who is London-born of Jamaican heritage and previously made two appearances for England in 2015, has become a key figure in midfield and club colleague Spencer, who played for England at youth levels but has roots in Jamaica, is the new goalkeeper. Jody Brown showed flashes of her brilliance on the wing against France, while forward Atlanta Primus, daughter of former Barnet, Reading and Portsmouth defender Linvoy Primus, was impressive too.
Shaw has been colossal in front of goal for Manchester City since joining from French club Bordeaux in 2021. The 26-year-old was involved in 27 goals in 22 appearances in the 2022-23 Women’s Super League, scoring 20.
Beating last-placed Panama in their next match, in Perth on Saturday, would significantly boost Jamaica’s chances of reaching the World Cup knockout phase for the first time. But they will be without the suspended Shaw for that game. Even if their time in New Zealand and Australia ends after three games again, though, they have definitely progressed since 2019.
“I started out with the under-20 team around 2011,” Sweatman says. “When we showed up to camp, we went to a place called the Reggae Boyz House in Kingston (Jamaica’s capital). There were 11 bunk beds, two bathrooms and a chef. There was no air conditioning. We would travel to training in a minibus and sometimes there wouldn’t even be any water. Now, we stay at the (four-star) Pegasus Hotel.
“Part of the team will feel like not much has changed as they’re still facing the same problems going into their second World Cup. We are not getting the payments of contracts and the quality of camps, which is a valid problem if you want to compete against the top countries.
“It is an amazing feeling just to get a contract, coming from where it all started. I’ve seen how much growth has been made, but there could have been a lot more.
“Imagine how successful we could be with the resources of England, the U.S., France or Germany. Jamaica would be a total powerhouse.”
(Top photo: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)
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