Despite Jamaica’s Reggae Girlz suffering a 0-7 thrashing to England on Sunday, Head Coach Hubert Busby believes the experience was beneficial ahead of the Concacaf World Cup Qualifying campaign.

The Jamaica senior women footballers were thoroughy outclassed in the international friendly at the King Power Stadium in Leicester as the Lionesses, in their final game before the UEFA Women’s Championship, controlled the contest from start to finish.

England had six different scorers, including Ella Toone, who scored twice in the first half.

Jamaica failed to register a single shot over the 90 minutes and had only 19 per cent of possession.

It could have potentially been a different outcome as the Kayla McKenna thought she levelled the game at 1-1 in the 19th minute, but it was disallowed after the video assistant referee (VAR) determined that her teammate Kiki van Zanten was obstructing England goalkeeper Hannah Hampton’s view from an offside position.

Though not pleased with the result, Busby says the team will learn from the defeat.

“We’ve got a lot of young players getting valuable minutes. It was another strong performance by [goalkeeper] Liya Brooks and a lot of players are stepping up and staking a claim to be in the squad,” he said.

“Overall, just really pleased with a lot of the players and I think towards the end, we could kind of tell that one team is ready to finish their season and one team is off to the Euros so the last 20, 25 minutes was difficult but again, proud of the players for continuing to finish off the game to be the best of their ability.”

England Manager Sarina Wiegman had sympathy for the Jamaicans but was pleased her team showed their quality throughout.

“We expected that we would be in the final third a lot, so we wanted to show what we could go there. Of course, we scored seven goals. That’s really nice. And still, we thought we could do a little bit better at some moments, get a little more composure and make an extra pause,” she said.

“We know that Jamaica didn’t have all their best players, so they were struggling a little bit. But still, you have to do it yourself.”

The result means the Reggae Girlz have conceded 20 goals in their last five games while failing to score in their last four.

Busby said their defensive effort will need significant improvement if they are to be more competitive in the future.

“There’s still areas as far as defensive mindset as it pertains to second balls in our box. We talked about the ability for us to win contact and win the second balls, I think we did a good job winning the first balls but not a great job winning the second ones and against a top four ranked team in the world, you obviously get punished for those things,” he said.

The Reggae Girlz are preparing for the Concacaf Women’s Championship qualification tournament, beginning in October, which forms part of the qualification to the 2027 FIFA World Cup.

Busby is hoping that he’ll be able to call up on his major stars like Captain Khadija “Bunny” Shaw and midfielder Drew Spence who have been absent from the past few squads.

“A lot of these players need a break – some of them will start in two, three weeks and most of the group will be heading back to school so it shows just how young this group is,” he said.

“As far as us as a staff, we’ll kind of reevaluate and continue to look at the areas to improve and obviously look to get ready for the matches in October where we hope to bring back the full allotment or selection of players available for the qualifiers,” Busby added.