PLAYERS wishing to represent the Reggae Boyz at this summer’s CONCACAF Gold Cup Tournament in the USA will have to display hunger and readiness, charged head coach Theodore Whitmore, even as he targets a top-four placing.

Fully mindful of the debacle at the last edition when Jamaica were embarrassingly eliminated in the first round, Whitmore, who successfully guided the team to retaining their Digicel Caribbean Cup title last December in Martinique, is adamant it won’t be business as usual and things will be done differently this time around.

“We want to select not necessarily the best 20 to represent the country, but the players who are ready and hungry, because the last Gold Cup I think we had the best possible team and… we went out in the first round,” reasoned Whitmore, who recently returned home from a three-week coaching attachment in Brazil.

At the 2009 Gold Cup, a number of the English-based players, who were on vacation from their professional clubs, missed the one-week training camp in the Cayman Islands and appeared to be struggling with their fitness, even while enjoying more playing time than the North American-based players who were in the midst of their season.

Jamaica are drawn in Group B of the 12-team confederation showpiece event which runs from June 5-25, and open their campaign against Caribbean neighbours Grenada at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California on June 6.

They then journey to the FIU Stadium in Florida to face Guatemala four days later, before wrapping up their preliminary round schedule against Honduras at the Red Bull Arena in Harrison, New Jersey.

Group A comprises defending champions Mexico, as well as Costa Rica, El Salvador and Cuba, while Group C has the USA, Canada, Panamá and Guadeloupe. The top two teams from each group, as well as the two best third-placed teams advance to the quarter-finals slated for the New Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey and the Robert F Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington DC, with the semi-finals set for the Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas and the final scheduled for the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.

Of the last Gold Cup, Whitmore admitted that mistakes were made with the handling of the team, but he’s desperate that they won’t be repeated.

“It was a lack of everything, probably mistakes on my part as well, but we have to learn from the past and I don’t think we will make the same mistakes again.”

The former Reggae Boy captain and star player assumed a philosophical posture when asked about the recent draw for the Gold Cup.

He added: “We haven’t done well in the last Gold Cup and we are targeting a spot in the top four this time around, so I’m saying it doesn’t really matter who we draw in the preliminary stage, whether it is the US, Mexico, Canada, Costa Rica or anybody else… we are preparing for the top four,” he insisted.

“We are going there not only to participate, and everybody will probably say it was a good draw, but they will be tough games, especially the first one because it will be against a Caribbean team.

“We have to prepare ourselves both physically and mentally because nothing is going to be given to us. We had prepared to play five games in the Digicel Caribbean Cup and we met our target, so we want to use the same road map. Once you are in the Gold Cup it mans you are a good team because it is your performance that got you there. Look at Trinidad and Tobago, they are not there because they didn’t perform too well,” he noted.

The Boyz are scheduled to play two friendly internationals this weekend. On Friday they host South American outfit Venezuela at the Catherine Hall Sports Complex in Montego Bay, before departing for El Salvador to oppose that country on Sunday.

Whitmore is happy for these two engagements for the number 48 ranked Jamaica, and he’s hoping for more stern competition when the team journeys to Brazil for the pre-Gold Cup training camp.

“We would want as many games as possible and going to brazil we know we can get at least three quality games, so international games can’t be too many,” he offered.