MONTEGO BAY, St James — Jamaica’s demise in the recent CONCACAF Hexagonal play-offs cannot be blamed on any coach, but more on the lack of application by players who under-performed, says former national midfielder Hector Wright.

Jamaica’s Reggae Boyz, who were last in the six team series, lost 1-0 and 2-0 to Trinidad and Tobago in a two-way friendly international series that served as kick-start to their preparation for the 2018 FIFA World Cup as Mexico, who were fourth in the CONCACAF finals were beat Oceana champions New Zealand to book their spot to Brazil next year.

Jamaica played under two coaches. Firstly, under Theodore Whitmore who started the campaign before making way for German Winfried Schafer, who led the team for the final four games, but failed to win a single game, which resulted in the Boyz finishing at the bottom of the tables.

Wright, who made his senior team debut in 1988, a year after he left Herbert Morrison Technical and was a fixture in the midfield for over a decade, said the players chosen lacked commitment to the cause.

“I don’t think the World Cup players we had in the recent campaign applied themselves as they should,” he told the Jamaica Observer in a recent interview. “We know they might not have had the time needed to work together, but we can’t be making excuses, we are talking about players who were coming out of professional clubs and leagues, so they should have applied themselves more based on the type of the opposition we faced,” he said.

Wright, who is now in charge of the football programme at his alma mater, said he did not see the kind of adaptation one would expect at this level from the players. “Every game you play is a different game depending on the opposition,” he pointed out. “If you play Mexico or another team it’s a different game, every game is different and it has a lot to do with application, the approach of the Jamaican team to all the games was practically the same.”

The former Jamaica standout said Whitmore, his former teammate at Seba United and the national team, was not given a chance to work with the team either.

“Coaches don’t go out there and play,” he said. “It’s the players, if you sit and watch the games we lost and drew against Mexico and the USA, the results had nothing to do with coaches, it was the basics that we did not apply, for example, crossing to the back post and the coverage,” Wright argued.

The midfielder, who was best remembered for his long-range passing ability, agreed that there is still a void for such a player in the Jamaican set-up. Wright added that perhaps such a player has become irrelevant in the new dispensation.

“The type of midfielders we have here are not goal-scoring midfielders, they just play outside the 18-yard box,” he noted.

“Players like myself and Whitmore had variety, we could pack into the 18-yard box or on the outside we were varied, not one- dimensional, we don’t see that kind of variety in the midfielders these days,” Wright pointed out.

The former Seba man, who was invited along with then Herbert Morrison teammate Garfield Anderson to train with a Finnish team while still in high school, said “the players these days they just want to be in and around the football and that is not good enough”.

“You must be able to vary your game depending on what the other team is doing, long pass or close ball skill.”

Wright was wistful when he was asked to review his career that spanned 110 games, scoring 15 goals. He conceded that with his ability he could have done more for the national team before his career was cut short by a knee injury.

“I could have done more, it is never enough, there is a whole lot more I could have done,” he concluded.