GLASGOW, Scotland — The medical staff of the Reggae Girlz team has allayed fears of any serious injury to Khadija “Bunny” Shaw after the ace striker was forced out of the friendly international game against Scotland inside Hampden Park on Tuesday evening.

However, Dr Lori-Ann Miller and physiotherapist Saundria Codling are unsure of the extent of the injury suffered by Shaw’s replacement Kayla McCoy, who also limped out of the game with a knee injury. McCoy is slated to have an x-ray done soon.

The game, which Jamaica lost 2-3, attracted a record 18,555 crowd at Hampden Park where the Scottish women were playing for the first time in seven years, and saw Jamaica’s talismanic striker Shaw netting her team’s two goals in the 15th and 49th minutes.

However, the powerful striker had to be pulled from the game shortly after her second goal with what seemed a serious ankle injury and her replacement McCoy also had to be withdrawn with a knee injury, forcing the Reggae Girlz to end the contest with 10 players.

But Menzies on the advice of Dr Miller and Codling, downplayed concerns.

He said pulling the players from the game was a precautionary measure, especially with their historic bow at the Fifa Women’s World Cup in France only 11 days away.

“Obviously, when “Bunny” [Shaw] went down, we didn’t want to take anymore risk because we have the World Cup coming up, so we wanted to ensure that all the players ended fit and healthy and so we took her out,” Menzies told the Jamaica Observer.

“It was just fatigue when she [Shaw] went down and the cold temperature would not have helped the situation, so again no major injuries.

“The only one we are currently watching is Kayla McCoy…we are going to do a little x-ray of her knee and then see what happens. But like I said, “Bunny” is fine and we just took her off as a precautionary measure… she is good, so Jamaica doesn’t have to worry,” the tactician assured.

However, Codling was more specific and measured when she spoke with the Observer last evening after the team had returned from being feted by the Jamaican High Commissioner Seth Ramocan and members of the JN Group London branch.

“Fatigue and the cold could be contributing factors, generally, but the injury is not debilitating,” she said.

“The player was hit by the studs of her opponent on the shin bone (tibia) and has radiating pains down into her (right) ankle, but she is okay.”

Regarding the performance against Scotland, who are also set to debut at the World Cup, Menzies felt his team gave a good showing, but in the same breath admitted that there is still a lot of scope for improvement.

Chelsea’s 20-year-old striker Erin Cuthbert scored a wicked 40-yard strike in the 30th minute before Manchester City’s Caroline Weir (35th) and Sophie Howard (56th), ensured it was the perfect send-off for the Scottish women.

The defeat ended Jamaica’s six-match unbeaten run since qualifying for the World Cup last October.

“That’s why we want to play these games, we want to simulate as much as we can to get our combinations right and the environment was good; not a whole lot of Jamaicans and that is what we are probably going to face during some of the games at the World Cup,” Menzies noted.

He continued: “But at the end of the day, the game was good, I think Scotland were organised, you could tell they are more polished, they are more together, and we just kind of keep patching in and out with training sessions and stuff like that, but it was good to get a quality game like that.

“But obviously we as the coaching staff take responsibility for the loss because I thought we had them pressed, but we weren’t organised,” the coach noted.

Looking ahead Menzies is promising to sort out the issues to ensure they are competitive against Brazil, Australia and Italy in the battle for one of two spots from Group C.

And while going into the June 7-July 7 World Cup as the lowest ranked team at 53, Menzies believes his team, outside the rankings, is not that far off from their more illustrious opponents.

“We are probably about a seven to eight right now (out of 10) and we still need some time to improve, but I think we need to get our legs back a little bit and once we get rested, we just have to make sure they understand their assignments, discuss it among ourselves and just get rolling again.

“Because sometimes you just have to learn from a loss. I thought the best defensive game we played was against Canada last year and we lost it, but we learnt from it. So we just need to maintain our discipline in each game and we will be good,” Menzies ended.