GRENOBLE, France — Despite the rocky start to their historic Fifa Women’s World Cup campaign, Reggae Girlz Head Coach Hue Menzies says the experience from the loss against Brazil will serve his team well for the remainder of the tournament.

While bemoaning the faulty display by the Reggae Girlz in some parts, Menzies also believed his debutantes also gave a good account of themselves.

As the tournament’s youngest and lowest ranked squad at number 53, Jamaica’s Reggae Girlz faced a tall ask against a more experienced and illustrious Brazilian team in their Group C opener at Stade des Alpes here yesterday.

And with the incomparable Marta on the sidelines, that opened the door for Cristiane, competing at her fifth World Cup, to steal the spotlight for the South Americans.

She netted all three goals for Brazil in the 3-0 rout in 15th, 50th and 64th minutes to give the Girlz a brutish welcome to the global showpiece.

“Surprisingly, some of our key players, especially our two centre backs, didn’t have the stellar game that they normally have and we didn’t expect that, so we are going to have to sit down with them because they are very intelligent players. Even though they are young, they are very intelligent.

“So, we feel we just need a little bit more leadership in the back, but I think we learned a lesson as far as understanding that these players that we are playing against are very experienced, and you are not playing the lesser teams you are playing high-quality teams. So these are things we are going to talk about and once we get that sorted out, we shouldn’t have an issue,” Menzies reasoned.

With 34-year-old Cristiane, who had not played for Brazil since last September, taking the spotlight for Brazil becoming the first woman to score two goals or more at three World Cups and the oldest player — male or female — to score a hat-trick at the tournament, 19-year-old goaltender Sydney Schneider was on point for Jamaica on the flip side.

Schneider at her usual best pulled off some impressive saves, including one that denied Barcelona Andressa from the penalty spot.

“I thought when we started the game, we had too much respect (for Brazil), but I was telling them that Sydney really saved us a lot, not just from embarrassment, but she was just there for us and we need to respond to those things. When your goalkeeper is pulling things out, you have to respond to that, so that’s her job and I think the experience is going to lift her up, and hopefully, lift our team up,” Menzies said of the young goalkeeper.

For Jamaica, the result left them at the foot of the standing and a huge task ahead of them if they are to progress to the second round, as at least one of the four best third-place teams. Brazil assumed pole position in Group C, ahead of Italy.

However, with the Reggae Girlz being accustomed to fighting through adversities and defying the odds, Menzies is confident that they can bounce back in Friday’s game against Italy in Reims.

“We have been in this situation before… we have another big game that we have to get a result. Also, we showed a lot of resilience and we haven’t seen the best of ‘Bunny’ Shaw, so that is something that we are going to push her a little bit and I do believe that she is going to respond to that.

“So we are just going to back and look at things and identify some of the areas that we need to fix and then after that just work on it in training and go over it in film and then analyse Italy and see where we can break them down and just get over the mental issues we have right now,” the tactician explained.

“Again these are some good learning experiences for some of our younger players and these are fixable things, so we are just going to go back to the drawing board and get these issues sorted out,” he added.

— Sherdon Cowan