Un­der­stand­ably, those of you who stayed up to watch the Women So­ca War­riors take on the cur­rent­ly sixth-ranked team in the world—Cana­da—in the open­ing group B match of the 2022 CON­CA­CAF Women’s Cham­pi­onship would have been dis­ap­point­ed.

Not on­ly would the re­sult have left you dis­mayed, but an ex­am­i­na­tion of the match stats, all were in favour of Cana­da—37 shots to one, with the lone­some shot from T&T be­ing a head­er from the edge of the penal­ty area; shots on tar­get: 13 to one; pos­ses­sion: 74 per cent to 26 per cent; pass­es: 590 to 222; and; cor­ners 8 to 0.

Let us not lose sight of the fact that Cana­da is ranked 2nd in CON­CA­CAF, just one po­si­tion be­hind the Unit­ed States and, as men­tioned, sixth in the world and has some tremen­dous play­ers in their squad.

Ja­nine Beck­ie, one of Cana­da’s for­wards, was a night­mare for the T&T de­fend­ers. Her move­ment off the ball, her po­si­tion­al play and her drib­bling abil­i­ty were all ex­cep­tion­al to wit­ness.

In ad­di­tion, be­fore the match kicked off, Chris­tine Sin­clair scored 189 goals in 310 games for Cana­da and when she scored 2 in Jan­u­ary 2020 against St Kitts and Nevis, she set a new in­ter­na­tion­al record.

Then, you have a play­er like Ju­lia Grosso who plies her trade for Se­rie A club Ju­ven­tus com­ing on as a sub­sti­tute and scor­ing 2 goals. In a nut­shell, this match-up was al­ways go­ing to be an up­hill task for the Women So­ca War­riors.

De­fen­sive­ly, they did not look as bad for most of the game. Coach Ken­wyne Jones was tac­ti­cal­ly try­ing to clog the mid­field and not give the Cana­di­ans room to ma­noeu­vre the ball. For 66 min­utes, it worked. Al­though the War­riors, at that point, were down 1-0, they were fight­ing to stay in the game.

How­ev­er, when the sec­ond goal was scored, it took the fight out of the team and they crum­bled un­der vis­i­ble fa­tigue and sub­se­quent­ly con­ced­ed an­oth­er 4 goals in the fi­nal 11 min­utes los­ing 6-0 and end­ing a mis­er­able, for­get­table night for T&T.

Un­til those fi­nal 23 min­utes of down­fall be­gan when the score was 1-0, T&T’s cen­tral de­fend­ers Vic­to­ria Swift and Rhea Bel­grave were ex­cel­lent.

Time and time again they were clear­ing balls that were com­ing from every di­rec­tion in­to their box. At the same time, the Cana­di­ans were smart; they at­tacked from wide po­si­tions with their full-backs Ash­ley Lawrence and Jayde Riv­iere dri­ving for­ward be­yond the likes of Beck­ie and Deanne Rose and caused prob­lems for the T&T de­fence.

None of the So­ca War­riors mid­field­ers was get­ting back to as­sist their wing­backs by mark­ing off the wide play­ers for Cana­da. As a re­sult, the balls just kept com­ing in­to the box with goal­keep­er Kimi­ka Forbes hav­ing to make some good saves in the first half to keep the score down to just one goal.

Per­haps coach Ken­wyne Jones was try­ing to do dam­age con­trol be­fore the game start­ed and was hop­ing to keep the score down to 2 or even three goals be­cause goal dif­fer­ence could play a part at the end of the tour­na­ment.

While the team de­fend­ed well, there was no out­let up front to try and hold the ball and give the mid­field­ers a chance to come for­ward and cre­ate a goal-scor­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty. When T&T won pos­ses­sion, they were look­ing to pass the ball back in­stead of try­ing to go for­ward and that, in it­self, cre­at­ed a prob­lem as the Cana­di­ans quick­ly closed them down and when a de­fend­er cleared the ball up­field, there was no white shirt for T&T with­in 15 me­tres of the ball.

One ob­ser­va­tion that must have been con­cern­ing for any coach was at cor­ner kicks.

Too many times, the Cana­di­ans were play­ing them short and at no time were they closed down by T&T. To be frank, the tac­tics seemed strange. The oth­er play­ers for the So­ca War­riors nev­er got go­ing be­cause they just did not get enough of the ball. Up front, Bri­an­na Austin was like the Lone Ranger and she didn’t even have Ton­to for sup­port.

Al­so note­wor­thy was the fact that mid­field­ers Rae­nah Camp­bell, Asha James and Kedie John­son were nev­er al­lowed to get in­to the game by the tough Cana­di­an out­fit.

Broad­ly speak­ing, the tour­na­ment has start­ed off with a bang. Group A is ar­guably the tough­est group with the likes of Mex­i­co, the USA, Ja­maica and Haiti all fight­ing to make the top 2.

One would have thought it was easy for the USA to be fol­lowed by Mex­i­co but what an up­set by the Reg­gae girls de­feat­ing Mex­i­co by 1-0 and al­though they on­ly had 34 per cent of the pos­ses­sion, it’s goals that count and they were able to score through their tal­ent­ed strik­er Khadi­ja Shaw who is a hand­ful. De­spite Ja­maica’s Ha­vana So­laun miss­ing a penal­ty, they were able to hold on for a re­mark­able vic­to­ry. They are a con­fi­dent bunch and may very well qual­i­fy for back-to-back Women’s World Cups.

One has to re­mem­ber that these women have many in­cen­tives to play for as this tour­na­ment serves as the re­gion’s fi­nal round of qual­i­fy­ing for the FI­FA Women’s World Cup to be held in Aus­tralia and New Zealand in 2023.

The top two teams in each group earn spots in the World Cup au­to­mat­i­cal­ly. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the win­ner of the event will get an au­to­mat­ic berth for the 2024 Olympics in France as well as the 2024 Gold Cup. On the oth­er hand, the two third-place fin­ish­ers in each group ad­vance to a ten-na­tion in­ter­con­ti­nen­tal play­off in Feb­ru­ary of 2023 to de­cide the fi­nal three places for the 2023 FI­FA Women’s World Cup.

So, as can be seen, all is not lost. There is still plen­ty to play for. Next, up is Cos­ta Ri­ca (to­mor­row, Ju­ly 8th at 7 pm) fol­lowed by Pana­ma (Mon­day, Ju­ly 11th at 7 pm).

Both are good teams but Jones should be con­fi­dent that if he puts in the hard work be­fore the next game and gets his tac­tics right the Women So­ca War­riors can do it. Cos­ta Ri­ca, in par­tic­u­lar, is go­ing to be tough to beat but I am sure he has done his home­work and has analysed the strengths and weak­ness­es of his op­po­nents. If he can make some ad­just­ments to T&T’s at­tack­ing for­ma­tion, who knows? The women may very well make the na­tion proud.

Ed­i­tor’s note:

The views ex­pressed in this col­umn are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion of which he is a stake­hold­er.