JAMAICA Football Federation (JFF) President Michael Ricketts says that the national senior women’s team’s second-consecutive qualification to the FIFA Women’s World Cup is critical in laying the groundwork for the sport’s sustained growth in the country.

This year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup, the ninth staging of the quadrennial international women’s association football championship, will be jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand and is scheduled to take place from July 20 to August 20.

Ricketts says that qualifying for back-to-back FIFA Women’s World Cups is a difficult task, but if Jamaica can accomplish this then women’s football in the country will appear hopeful.

“Hopefully this [qualifying for their second-consecutive World Cup] really sends a strong signal to Jamaica as it relates to the positive impact and social impact that these two qualifications ought to have on our little boys and girls — and we are just very excited at what will unfold after another qualification,” Ricketts told the Jamaica Observer.

“We are just intent on ensuring that the whole psyche of our little boys and girls is positively impacted by back-to-back qualifications. So when you think that there are 211 countries in the world, and I understand that 129 of those have actually professionally played football, it’s not just an ordinary feat to qualify back to back for a global tournament. I mean, we are just an ordinary Third World country that struggles to meet our football demands.”

Ricketts says another approach to advancing the sport in the country is to have both qualified coaches and grass roots programmes.

“We must put programmes in place, and we are intent on getting a proper grass roots programme,” he said. “Just last evening we had a discussion with Mr Rudolph Speid and he was bringing me up to date on the number of D licence coaches we have. And there are now over 300 of those and they are now being prepared so our grassroots programme can be fully supported from a technical perspective.

“We believe that from age six you ought to be technically and correctly prepared so that when you reach 10 and 12 you don’t have to be uncoached and then recoached — so you will be coached by people who are technically competent. So, this is what we want to institute.

“We have a committee that is a talent identification, grass roots, and development committee. So this committee will be very active in identifying grass roots kids, having them properly harnessed, and then getting them in a formal setting so we can then make the transition from little kids to high school players, and then eventually national players.”

Ricketts emphasised the necessity of developing sports, which requires sponsorship assistance.

“When you think that we have 12 teams, six on either side of the gender that we must take care of — and I would like for someone to do an audit on how many times in a calendar year we have to send a national team overseas — it’s challenging but we’re up to the task,” he said.

“So, I want to again mention our sponsors. We had Courts and KFC on board within a week, and we need other corporate entities to come on board as we try to not just make this football succeed but, like I have always said, we want to positively impact the psyche and social needs of the boys and girls that are interested in playing the sport.”