Against the backdrop of the senior Reggae Girlz’s success in the international arena, incumbent President Michael Ricketts has pledged a reform of the local women’s football programme if he remains in office after Sunday’s Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) presidential election.

The JFF voting congress is to be held at Rusea’s High School in Hanover at 11:00 am.

Ricketts, who unveiled his manifesto for the upcoming elections at the Wembley Centre of Excellence in Clarendon on Wednesday, said the women’s football programme will be prioritised.

The Reggae Girlz became the first Caribbean team, male or female, to compete in the World Cup knockout stages since Cuba’s achievement in 1938. At the 2023 global showpiece hosted by Australia and New Zealand, Jamaica held France and Brazil to scoreless results and won their first World Cup match with a 1-0 victory over Panama to advance from the group stage. Jamaica’s women had previously qualified for the France 2019 World Cup.

“We will concentrate heavily on women’s football. They have brought us so much glory over the last decade or so, and so we must grow this women’s programme,” Ricketts told the Jamaica Observer.

Rudolph Speid, who is on Ricketts slate as a director, in delivering the 2024 to 2028 manifesto, said that the JFF will establish a legacy programme that he said will support growth of girls’ and women’s football in the country.

Under the legacy programme, one of the main objectives is to establish a women’s league equivalent to the Jamaica Premier League (JPL) for men.

“Women must get paid to play football,” Speid said.

The JFF said further development projects for the women’s game include creating a women’s football budget, greater accountability, engaging the Government in identifying a property for a dedicated female team facility, and establishing a women’s department within the JFF, a dedicated marketing and public relations manager, and social media department.

In his address, Speid promised robust finance and information technology departments. A competition supervisor, three team managers, one women’s scout, and a dedicated training centre for all female teams are also on the agenda.

“Even though challenging, we were able to create a pool of over 60 senior women’s players that provides us with depth and ability to engage in multiple tournaments, which is a critical part of our development of women’s football in the country,” Speid added.

“Our goals for the Reggae Girlz [are] to be Concacaf women’s champions, be ranked in the top 20 of the FIFA rankings, get to the quarter-finals of the next World Cup, qualify for the Under-17 and Under-20 World Cup tournaments, have an elite age-group girls’ competition at youth level in the Under-13, Under-15, and Under-18, and have a database of a minimum 5,000 girls playing football on the island,” he said.

Jamaica’s senior women are currently ranked 40 in the world, while the Concacaf’s perennial top team United States are rated second globally.