WOMEN’S Committee Chairperson Elaine Walker-Brown says Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) is looking to expand the programme to include developing a dedicated facility specifically for women’s football.

JFF will argue that it has seen relative success over the last few years, with the Reggae Girlz participating in the Fifa Women’s World Cup in 2019 and 2023. Also, despite two teams withdrawing, the Jamaica Women’s Premier League returned for the second-straight year last weekend, and the ISSA schoolgirl competition is also being held on a consistent basis.

There has also been an increase in player sales for Jamaican-born players, most famously with Reggae Girlz Captain Khadija Shaw who has made moves to French club Bordeaux and English club Manchester City within the last five years.

Walker-Brown told the Jamaica Observer that she wants to further elevate the programme with the potential site, which will reach more women and girls across the island.

“There’s a property that we’re working on out of Kingston for women’s football, and I pray it happens. We’ll take women’s football from Kingston and St Andrew,” she said. “And we are out there, so if you want to be employed you’ll have dormitories and so on, so you don’t have to be from Kingston and St Andrew to be involved — anywhere you are, you can be part of it.”

Though not confirming the exact location and the potential costs associated with it, Walker-Brown is confident it will happen in the next few years.

“We’ll have Fifa’s support,” she said. “I tell people all the time: ‘The reason why I’m excited, especially with the women’s department is [because] once we put everything in place and follow the guidelines, the JFF doesn’t have to worry about the persons that go to that department to be paid.’ The resources are there at our disposal, it’s just for us to organise ourselves and do it the proper way and it will come. ”

Another objective of the JFF is to introduce a second-division women’s league, which Walker-Brown says will greatly benefit the programme.

“We’re looking at [having a] tier 2 [competition] so each parish association has the opportunity to equip a women’s team,” she said. “The schoolgirls’ competition started and every parish has three to four teams so [that] you have a platform to select from, so we’re trying our best to ensure we give every girl a chance that wants to play football. But a lot depends on the quality and what happens at the tier 1 level. We try to emphasise and ensure management and players of the women’s premier league know their responsibility where the development of women’s football is concerned.”

The initiatives may seem ambitious from the outside looking in but JFF President Michael Ricketts is urging the Government and corporate Jamaica to step in and help the women’s programme.

“When you think that out of 201 countries that make up Fifa, for Jamaica to go to two consecutive World Cups, that’s no ordinary achievement,” he told the Observer. “We should be able to use that to market the sport of football. The JFF is really now looking to strengthening our marketing arm to ensure we get a lot of private sector companies to help us.

“It’s not just about playing about football but about the social impact and the well-being of all those who play. We want to use this as a tool to nation building to ensure we play football in every single community, every nook and cranny, so [that] our homicide, rape, and robbery rates will go down significantly. This is what we want, to engage the private sector and the Government to help us ensure we impact the lives of young boys and girls.”

Walker-Brown’s involvement in women’s football has surpassed 30 years, and despite the controversies surrounding the national senior women’s team and the JFF she says the sport has never been better.

“I have seen a major change,” she said. “The interest is great. Persons … are putting themselves out there that would never normally do that. A lot of people that weren’t for women’s football now understand what it’s doing to young lives, especially girls. They understand now that it leads to vast opportunities to reach where they want to reach in life, and I’m very appreciative. I want to grab at every opportunity that comes; all the persons that want to help, we want to ensure we receive them and build right across Jamaica.”