Brown suffers injury in Girlz warm-up win over Morocco
JAMAICA’S senior women’s football team experienced a setback ahead of the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup after key player Jody Brown was injured during the Reggae Girlz 1-0 friendly victory over Morocco on Sunday.
The ninth staging of the FIFA Women’s World Cup will be jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand, and is scheduled to take place from July 20 to August 20.
Lorne Donaldson, head coach of the Reggae Girlz, said the forward should be out for a few days.
“I am sure she is going to be out for a few days because it is a deep contusion. So Jody picked up a good knock and I thought that she was done for the game, but she wanted to go on. We don’t yet… I am no doctor, but she seems like she is going to be hobbling around for a few days,” Donaldson said.
Atlanta Primus scored the game-winning goal for the Girlz in the 18th minute of the contest, which was played behind closed doors at Galvin Park in Melbourne, Australia.
The Jamaicans, who were said to have dominated from the start, should have taken the lead early in the game when Khadija Shaw was fouled inside the 18-yard box. However, the striker was unable to convert the penalty kick.
Not long after, Primus made no mistake to give her team a 1-0 lead.
Reports are that Morocco applied the squeeze in the second half but the Jamaicans, guided by Rebecca Spencer in goal, competently held their own.
Donaldson was encouraged by the overall performance.
“It was a team [Morocco] that gave us a lot of possession in the first half because that’s the way they play. They play very compact; they were hard to break down and so we had to be patient, and obviously we missed that penalty. We came back and scored right after, which was good,” he said.
“It was a good response after missing a penalty but I thought the first half we were a lot more composed and we did some good stuff. We moved the ball around and connected on a lot more passes than I had anticipated, but the second half was always going to be different. Morocco were trailing 0-1 and needed to come out and drive the numbers forward.
“Overall, I thought we defended very well in the last 15 minutes, as that’s something we have been working on in trying to keep clean slates. But overall it is just, again, a good warm-up game going into the next match,” Donaldson explained.
On July 23 the 43rd-ranked Reggae Girlz are to face the fifth-ranked France in Group F. Thereafter, the Girlz are to meet 52nd-ranked Panama on July 29, followed by an August 2 match against eighth-ranked Brazil.