The Reggae Boyz need to get a positive result against Costa Rica in their crucial CONCACAF World Cup Qualifying game here inside the National Stadium on Good Friday to ensure they remain in the hunt for a place in the final leg of the journey to the Russia 2018 World Cup Finals.

That’s the view of one of the team’s leading players, Joel ‘Jobi’ McAnuff.

“The last two (games) at home haven’t been good enough performance wise, or result wise, and we’ve given ourselves work to do for the away games and we can’t really afford to lose ground in the group, so we need to make sure we get a good result off the back of the Haiti win,” McAnuff told the Jamaica Observer shortly after the group of UK-based players arrived in the island on Monday evening.

“That was a big win for us and a great performance from everybody and we really need to just summon up a performance in front of obviously our fans at home,” continued McAnuff, who’s well aware of the importance of pleasing the Jamaican fans, who have been less than impressed with earlier renditions against Nicaragua and Panama.

The 34-year-old Leyton Orient winger, who led Reading FC in the Barclays Premier League during the 2012-13 season, revealed that he and his England-based compatriots have spoken from time to time about the importance of these two games, including the return fixture next Tuesday in San Jose, in the context of advancing to the final round (Hexagonal) of CONCACAF qualifying series where the top three teams earn automatic tickets to Russia, and the fourth-placed team enters an inter-continental play-off for another shot at Russia.

“We have been talking about just how keen these two games are, obviously not just our games, but the other two that are going on (Haiti vs Panama). It is such a small, tight group, if you lose a game you can really lose ground, so we need to keep it as tight as possible and make sure we don’t lose the games. We would love to win them and that’s what we will be setting out to do, but the main thing is keeping it nice and tight and picking off the wins when we can,” he said.

McAnuff, who participated in both the Copa America tournament in Chile as well as the CONCACAF Gold Cup last summer, despite personal challeges at the time, noted that he’s now in much better physical conditioning than when he last donned the black, green and gold colours of Jamaica.

“I’m great, I’m in a lot better condition than the last couple of games. I was training, but I wasn’t playing the matches to get you sharp and it’s the same for a lot of the squad now; everybody is in great condition and personally I’m really looking forward to the games and being in good condition. I feel strong, fit and ready to go, man.”

During last summer’s Gold Cup, Jamaica traded blows with Costa Rica in a contest which ended 2-2, but McAnuff is firmly of the view that the Boyz came out of that contest in much higher spirits. In fact, they went on to top their group on their way to the final for the first time.

“I think it was a very good performance, we really should have won the game with the chances we had late on in the game. We were really strong. They started fairly well, but once we got to grips with the tactical side of things I thought we really imposed our game on them and we looked strong towards the end of the game and I think they’ll know that coming into this game now.

“We are going to be a tough team to play and from our point of view Costa Rica has always been one of the stronger teams in the region, but I feel we’ve really closed that gap of late and I think that showed in the performance and the result, and I think we want to go one better and win the game and we want to top our group, that’s our goal,” McAnuff said.

– Ian Burnett