If you have been following Jamaica’s Reggae Girlz journey through qualification and by extension their historic debut at the Fifa Women’s World Cup, you would have noticed that most of the players are overseas-based.

In fact, only just about a handful of players who have been a part of the entire qualifying campaign were local-based and that number trickled down for the World Cup.

Though she was not officially a part of the 23-player roster for the World Cup, goalkeeper Chris-Ann Chambers was the only local-based player present at the showpiece.

That is one of the major concerns that Menzies and his assistants Lorne Donaldson and Andrew Price have, as they believe the development of local talents is a critical part of the Reggae Girlz programme at all levels.

Since the withdrawal of longtime sponsor Sherwin Williams, the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) has struggled to gain adequate sponsorship to enable the local women’s league to find its footing.

Because of this, Menzies and his assistants have encouraged younger players to focus on education, which would enable them to join the likes of Trudi Carter, Konya Plummer, Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw and now Jody Brown, among others, in attending school overseas. That would result in them having access to better facilities and a competitive football tournament in the college arena.

Shaw and Carter have since graduated and taken up professional contracts with French FC Bordeaux and Italian club AS Roma, respectively.

“Obviously our league is not where it needs to be, so we have to encourage them to go overseas. in a matter of nine months, we have sent players overseas and look at the product we have. So we will get back to visiting some of the players that just graduated from college and try to get them placed in a professional environment, so that we can keep this momentum going,” Menzies shared.

That said, Menzies is once again advocating a proper women’s league structure in the island to better prepare and sustain the development of local players for transition to a more competitive environment.

“I think as far as the league is concerned we have to get involved with the grass root programmes to help build that league and sustain it. Playing a league with two months is not good enough we have to extend that season because right now the numbers aren’t where they are supposed to be, so we have to include high school players.

“So we probably have to try to get a six-month league and then the high school season starts for three months, so that will be nine months for some of these young players playing and we still have to identify some of these players that are local to either get them into universities and try to get them overseas to develop and keep plugging with the league until we get to that point where we have enough players and a structured league to encourage players, and good players to stay home and develop that league,” Menzies explained.

The tactician remains optimistic that the Reggae Girlz’s historic debut at the Fifa Women’s World Cup will result in greater investments for women’s football locally.

“The World Cup is the height of football, and so we hope that our federation and corporate Jamaica come on board and stay on board. Our federation had made some commitments, but I think they need to come together with corporate Jamaica and create a better environment from the grassroots,” Menzies noted.

“Putting these kids in a professional environment is a big thing for us and then injecting some of these kids back into their communities to let them talk about their experience here at the World Cup and obviously corporate Jamaica sponsoring some of these players and putting their faces out there is going to start an evolution,” he added.

Finally, Menzies pointed out that his biggest take away from the World Cup was the fact that his Reggae Girlz team showed that they have what it takes to compete with some of the best teams in the world, despite limited resources.

The Girlz lost 0-3 to 10th-ranked Brazil, 0-5 to 16th-ranked Italy and scored their first — ever World Cup goal courtesy of Havana Solaun in a 1-4 scoreline against sixth-ranked Australia.

“It shows that we can compete at this level, we just finished playing three top 20 teams in the world in our group and they beat each other, so we know we can compete at this level, we just gave up some silly goals, but those we know we can fix. And that should open the eyes of many people and we are going to keep developing players to come back to this stage and that is what is important for us the next four years,” Menzies ended.