BOCA CHICA, Dominican Republic — Jamaica’s Under-23 team continued their preparations for the final Group Three game against the hosts with head coach Miguel Coley conducting a lengthy training session yesterday.

The team was slated to have two sessions yesterday, with the first session taking place at 7:00 am here (6:00 am Jamaica time) and the second was scheduled to take place at 4:00 pm.

However, after the two-hour morning session at the Dominican Super League Giants Baseball stadium in South Boca Chica, Coley opted not to have another session.

He instead held a one-hour meeting with the players.

“Well, right now you don’t want to have too much training sessions, because sometimes less can be more. So it is about putting quality into play and this morning (yesterday) was good; we trained for an extended period of time and right now we are going to do some board work with them,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

It is understood that the meeting was aimed at reinforcing the game plan ahead of the decisive Caribbean Football Union (CFU) qualification encounter when the two teams meet at 4:00 pm (3:00 pm Jamaica time) at the Estadio Panamericano.

After having a light day on Thursday to recover from Wednesday’s 6-1 win over St Lucia, the Boyz were put to the task. They went through various drills that focused on passing accuracy, close marking, as well as tempo and speed.

“It is about developing more touches, more speed of play and work on some functional training and the boys responded well in the middle part and last part of the session,” said Coley.

“It (tempo) is important regardless of which team we play. We need to have a standard and we want Jamaica to have a standard — speed of play and speed of thought — so it is about quick thinking and quick playing and concentrating for the whole 90 minutes or more,” he added.

And despite seeing a significant improvement in the attitude of the team, Coley explained that the psychological aspect is still a work in progress.

“First thing is that there must be an improvement of attitude, but the whole mental aspects of it… I just have to continue working on them in that regard. They have talent, but that mental toughness and level of concentration is important,” he noted before adding that the mentality of the players will have a telling effect on their quality of play.

“Sometimes it is not so much the fitness; it is about your mental attitude to whatever you are doing. Sometimes it seems physical, but most times it’s psychological and it is just for them to push themselves that when they are out there and feel tired they can get up and push on.”

Today’s schedule has the Boyz meeting for lunch at midday, before departing to the game venue for practise at 3:00 pm. The one-hour training session will commence at 4:00 pm, and Coley revealed that they will be working on set plays which are an important factor.