President of the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF), Michael Ricketts has given his organisation a passing grade of seven out of 10 for its performance for the year 2019.

“We had a pretty decent year, and if we were to rate it out of 10, seven would be reasonable. But we want to improve on all of those,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

“I think we had a pretty successful year where we were able to have done a number of things that never happened before. We qualified a women’s team [to the World Cup] — first time in the history of football, not just in Jamaica, but the Caribbean,” said Ricketts.

“We were the first Caribbean team to host a Gold Cup game so all in all I think we did well. but we want to improve on all of this in 2020,” he added.

But there were a number of negatives, where the JFF were taken to task on social media involving World Cup accreditation issues for Cedella Marley — the mainstay of the female football programme — and the typical annual salary issues with the players and coaches.

Then the JFF was fined US$10,000 by Concacaf for their failure to acquire visas in time for the Under-15 team to play in the regional development competition.

“Of course the JFF would certainly want to do a number of things differently. We would have made some mistakes that we certainly wouldn’t want to repeat,” Ricketts pointed out.

“We will be putting standing committees in place, and we will be engaging the services of persons who have an interest in growing the sport,” he emphasised.

Ricketts, who defeated Ambassador Stewart Stephenson at the presidential polls to take the reins in 2017, saluted the performances of the flagship men’s senior team, while highlighting other positives of 2019.

“Our men’s team did very well and we probably attained our highest ranking in a number of years, and we did pretty well at the Gold Cup.

“We opened for the first time a full synthetic pitch [and] we were able to have completed the Captain Horace Burrell Centre of Excellence. We completed our dormitory, and of course we sorted out a MOU with the University [Hospital] of the West Indies where all national players that get injured, can go straight there and are treated free of cost,” said Ricketts.

For the year 2020, dubbed the year of vision, Ricketts has outlined the JFF’s plans going forward — and the establishment of football fields once again takes the spotlight.

“We want to look at fields and we are in the process of having discussions with SCJ Holdings, as they are the persons who have responsibility for divesting these sugar lands,” Ricketts noted.

“So we want to establish, if not for this year, certainly before my tenure expires, looking at developing at least one field in each of the four confederations, and this is where our new thrust will be of course,” he said.

“The World Cup qualifiers start this year and once you are in the top six, you qualify for the hexagonal, and we are hoping, unless something seriously goes wrong, we should be in the top six. So this year will be a crucial year as it relates to getting to Qatar [Fifa World Cup 2022],” he added.

“And very important, too, is that our Girlz will try for the Olympics, and the Under-17s and the Under-20s will try the age-group World Cup tournaments. I think we are going to have a packed schedule for 2020, but we are bracing ourselves for the challenges,” Ricketts ended.